Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She danced alone, she always had.

Sat alone.

Walked alone.

Drank alone.

A slow sip of the sharp whisky, a bad gift from an employee she couldn’t name, Lena didn’t even know why she had kept the bottle. Probably for a night like this, when she wanted nothing but the darkness to keep her company. Never giving herself away to anyone, but her own heart still yearned for the illusion of love in her life from the one person she feared she would never have. So many tears had fallen for her until she couldn’t cry anymore.

Lex’s funeral had been today. A quiet affair, that only Lena attended. Letting the man rot in an undecorated grave, under a name that wasn’t his own to stop befoulment of the spot from the general public. Although the not so fringe elements of the country these days still whispered that he was a hero. A desperate need to blame everyone the ‘other’ they imagined in their mind for all their woes, even though everything they were experiencing had more to do with the very people they idolised. She had walked away from the cemetery feeling like a part of her heart had been returned to her, oddly enough. As if now that Lex was dead, Lena was finally free to let the man go and banish the evil reality of who he was and what he had done in favour of remembering the boy he had once been. The dark sickness did not twist him in his heart and mind. Though if she was honest with herself, it was a great disservice to all of his victims to even try and pretend that her dead brother was mad. As if he deserved an excuse or an explanation. Sometimes the dark creatures of the earth weren’t complicated at all.

Lena let out a sigh, leaning back into her couch as she stared through the darkness of her apartment to light spanning out over the city. Bathing it in fake starlight. She had retreated into herself this past few years, all alone as she pushed away everyone she had left in her life, ever since the incident and Kara’s subsequent departure from National City. She was in south-east Asia now, at least according to the last postcard she had sent. Trekking the globe on a journey for understanding as she had explained before she left. It wasn’t that Lena didn’t understand why the woman had left, she probably understood the profound cavernous loss more than most, but it still hurt along with the mix of other complicated emotions that existed in her heart. All directed towards her best friend, who was so much more. But even though the illusion of love that existed in her heart wasn’t real, Lena couldn’t help but still care genuinely.

And yet, Kara never left a return address on the postcards that she sent. There had just been that final night, the first night really, between them before Lena woke up in the morning to find Kara gone. The sheets were already cold. All alone, once more all alone. The lingering issues between them still left festering as Kara sought for something outside herself to make her understand why she had been left so devastated and broken. The giant loss of who she was, now gone forever. While Lena had felt ridiculously stupid, and highly insulted by herself, for all the ways that Kara had no doubt planned for herself to reveal the fact that she was Supergirl Lena highly doubted that she had imagined the scenario turning out as it had. Kara, no longer having the ability to be Supergirl because she was now as human Lena herself. Her powers gone, stripped from her entirely and lost forever no matter how hard Lena attempted to restore them.

Months and months of trials and test and operations and absolutely everything that Lena could think of until Kara had walked into her office one day and said she was done, done trying to return the part of herself that had been so brutally stolen from her by Lex. Once again, Lena was trying and failing to atone for crimes committed by her brother. The hatred, that complex hatred she felt for the man, was now buried and dead in the ground along with her hope that Kara would ever return to National City. The hope that she would ever return to her. And Lena wasn’t a believer in ghost stories, but the darkness that seemed to descend on National City since Supergirl had, as far as the public knew, vanished was slowly starting to make Lena wonder why she was bothering to stay in a place that held so many painful memories.

She had left before; she had fled once to the sunny shores of the west coast in hope for a fresh start. Surely she would be able to do it again especially now that she had shoved everyone out of her life, the lingering connection to Kara just too painful for Lena to stomach their presence any longer in her life. But Lena knew why she had stayed, and she knew in her heart why she wouldn’t leave. She had to be here, to honour everything that Kara had once stood for. A symbol in the night to keep the evil at bay.

For what else could she do in the darkness of the night when she had nothing to keep her insomnia at bay but venture out into the night, a mask in place to hide her identity, and protect the people who spent half their days revolted by who she really was. But Lena never fought the shadows and harshness of the dark for the credit. It wasn’t like she particularly cared for the public’s opinion of her these days either. A now reclusive CEO, rarely seen in the public eye, except to tinker away in R and D while she left the running of the business side of her company to people she deemed ethical enough to do so. At this point, Lena had resolved that she intensely disliked the majority of people, but had a sane enough philosophy to agree that they still deserved the dignity of safe and happy lives. She did what she could, as much as she could now.

Donating nearly her entire, and considerable, personal fortune away over a single year. Not out of a need to appear philanthropic, she did the majority of it anonymously, but because ethically Lena could no longer stomach the fact that she had more money then she could ever possibly spend and people in the country she called home still had to set up Go Fund Me’s for insulin shots. Siting like a fat dragon on top of a hoard of gold was not a person she wanted to be any longer. Though she would never live on the streets, enough money still to live comfortably for the rest of her life, at least she had one less sin on her conscious left to carry. Not like a Wayne, pondering moodily at the demise of his city when the majority of its problems could be solved rather directly by the man paying his taxes. Instead, Lena could be left alone to ponder moodily and beat up criminals at night without having fifty private planes. Vigilantism was not something she had pictured for herself in her five-year plan, but someone had to do it, and nobody else had the means.

The police were useless, operating more like a security force for the rich and famous of this city than actually helping the people who needed it. And Lena would never trust the government on principle. Particularly considering that idiotic jackass Baker was still annoying the entire planet with thinly veiled Xenophobic speeches, more interested in ramping up for re-election than doing any real good for the people he was supposed to represent. Lena took a slow sip of her drink, letting out a hiss as the wound on her side stung at the stretch. The knife that had slipped past the armour she had developed, piercing her side in the early hours of yesterday morning had been laced with an unknown substance, or at least it was unknown until Lena had staggered back into her home and injected herself with as much Harun-El as she possibly could to counter the substance, toeing the line of poisoning herself with the material that she once thought would be the salvation of humanity. And instead, it had just killed James. And created the monster that was Lex, before eventually leading to his death as well. So now, Lena Luthor instead allowed it to flood her vein in micro amounts.

One injection per week, just enough to give her above average strength and speed. Enough to earn her a reputation in the dark underbelly that existed underneath the sunny facade of National City. Outlier they called her, something that Lena had taken in with a raised eyebrow after reading the column now dedicated to documenting her nighttime exploits. The column that in a just world, Lena would have preferred had Kara’s name on the byline. But it wasn’t a just world, and even though she ached for her with every fibre of her being, Lena was happy that Kara was as far away from the city that had been home to so much pain for her as she possibly could be. Lena just hoped for her happiness.

Even if it wasn’t with her.

She let out another breath, taking the final sip of her drink and standing to her feet made her way towards down the hallway to the back room of her penthouse. Hidden behind a panel, Lena had designed and installed herself, the door opening with a hiss to reveal the dark bunker that she had created for herself. The walls lined with weapons that Lena tended to favour when her enhanced strength wained, a large mat and training equipment in the middle of the room where Lena attempted to better herself and her human athleticism when she could, the wall at the back of the room set up like her lab. Large vials of the diluted Harun-El on hand to save her ass just in case she came stumbling back home like the night before.

But it was the dark suit she had developed for herself that she focused on, running her fingers over the deep scratches caused by alien claws that she still hadn’t gotten around to fixing. Maybe a part of herself happy that they remained, gouged above her heart as a visceral reputation to the villains she faced that she wasn’t to be trifled with. Carefully, slowly, she strapped herself into the dark suit, placing the dark helmet over her head, the voice of her combat assistance firing up instantly.

“Good Evening, Outlier. Vitals are strong, Harun-El levels declining at the normal half-life, repairs to the bruise on your spine continuing apace.”

Lena cracked her neck, eyes flicking over the data as it appeared on her inner visor.

“Good,” she muttered. “Make sure to tell me when you’ve finished running diagnostics on the new glider, would you Vera? I want to get back in the air as soon as I can.”

Lena’s eyes drifted to the mangled mess of her old glider in the corner, taking it in with a frown at the pang of loss she felt for the charred and melted metal. A fight with a particularly nasty acid spitting alien causing the left wing to all but melt off and leaving her to spiral into a particularly ugly crash and burst a fire hydrant.

“Confirming that the weapon’s deal you’ve been keeping track of will be conducted in approximately half an hour on the east docks. Bearing that my calculations and analysis of the chatter is correct,” Vera sounded out electronically.

Lena let out a groan, walking over to her weapons rack and selecting a series of smoke bombs to strap to her belt.

“You’re analysis’ are always correct, Vera,” she replied distractedly. “I just wish that the police didn’t turn a blind eye to the Fourth Street Reds activities in favour of bribes.”

A local gang that had been small potatoes a year ago, a mix of aliens and humans, left suppressed by Supergirl’s presence in the city that had now risen to prominence had been giving Lena nothing but grief. Whether it be illegal weapons, smuggled from off-world, or drugs that went ‘missing’ from the Police lock up only to reappear on the streets, Lena had made her mission to hunt down and beat the living snot out of each member who dared to sneeze in her direction. They were clever, lying low when they needed to, flaring up when they could. But they weren’t smart enough, and if Lena’s intel was right, their entire enterprise relied on the deal tonight going well. If she crashed this particular party, it might just be enough for her to wipe them out of this city once and for all. Packing a few extra throwing knives, strapping them to her thigh, Lena opened the trapdoor leading up a small ladder to the roof of the building. Once she stood out in the open air, she took a deep breath, taking in the sight, sounds and smells before taking a running leap off the building, three times as fast and just as far. She let herself whip through the air, ascending for nearly twenty metres after the force of her leap, before starting to fall and felt another flash of annoyance for her broken glider. At speed faster then the eye, she raised her gauntlet and fired off the long length of monofilament wire into the night, feeling the end of its stick hard and fast to the side of the next building, and she started to swing.

Perched on top of a nearby roof, Lena allowed herself to be enveloped in the night sky as she stared down at the nearby warehouse and wondered to herself, not for the millionth time why criminals felt a need to be so ridiculously apparent about their choice of venues. It wasn’t like a midnight meeting in a dodgy warehouse screamed nasty business or anything, after all.

Watching the slow trickle of people making their way into the building, Lena spoke quietly under her breath.

“How many do you track, Vera?”

There was a flicker on her screen as the panel flickered through infrared vision, and then onto a weak X-ray type that Lena had modelled after Kara’s.

“Twenty-two and counting, boss,” Vera replied. “It looks to me that over half of the guards are minors.”

Lena frowned.

The Reds must be on their last legs if they were hiring kids to watch their stock, probably picking up the desperate kids on the fringe elements of their own families that would be naive enough to be picked up and thrown into a wall by the mysterious and dangerous Outlier.

“No casualties tonight, Vera,” Lena replied finally. “I’m not going to punish children for the situation they are stuck in.”

“You know as well as I that none of the Reds would be doing what they do if they had another choice,” Vera answered. “Even Dain-“

“Well Dain can just go fuck himself at this point, Vera,” Lena cut across with a swear. “He’s been a right little shit ever since I picked him up the first time.”

Dain was a low-level lieutenant in the Reds, making his mark and way up the ranks of the gang quickly once they realised his proclivity and gift at hacking. Lena had busted him easily though, shutting down his operations while glued to the side of his so-called secret hide-out with one tablet before swooping in herself and proceeding to shake down the skinny man. He had been a tough nut to crack, but eventually, he had agreed to play Lena’s eyes and ears from inside the gang. Giving her the intel she needed in exchange for a promise not to turn him over to the FBI for his involvement with the creation of several high-end viruses’. Lena had offered him an out of the gang various times, places to go, jobs to take with people who owed her favours, but the man insisted on staying. A part of Lena knew that he did only out of some misguided hope that some random person would off her before the Red’s entire operation went belly up. For the life of her, Lena couldn’t understand why a man who could be so intelligent was also so stupid, but she did understand the desperate need and desire for a family, something the man believed that he had found in the Reds.

“Whatever you say, boss,” Vera replied, making Lena’s scowl deepen and think dark thoughts about finally deleting the evolving snarky personality and replacing her with someone who didn’t question Lena’s every choice. But Lena had designed her that way, figuring she needed at least one person, or robot, in her life that held her accountable for her more stupid ideas and actions.

Not that it ever stopped her from doing them.

“Ten minutes, boss,” Vera sounded out, drawing Lena from her thoughts and pinging her attention.

“Well then, let’s get started,” Lena replied, standing to her feet and launching her hook into the night once more, zip lining over to the roof of the warehouse the deal was taking place.

Gently, she landed on her feet. Falling to her belly, she slowly started to crawl her way along the roof towards the windows that sat on the roof and allowed light to enter the building during the daytime. She eased open a panel carefully, dropping inside as quiet as a cat and softly walked over the group of stacked containers to make her way into the highest eaves of the building. Hovering in the darkness, avoiding the light cast by the fluorescent lights, Lena focused on the group of people gathering in the centre of the room. Vera had been right; there were a whole lot of nervous kids in the room. They were handling their semi-automatics with all the grace of potatoes, with eyes that flickered around the edges of the room with fear. Lena let out an annoyed breath, before shifting her gaze to the middle of the hand circle they had formed. Large glowing weapons sat open for display, their alien nature evident to anyone with eyes and Lena wondered how long it would take into the fight she as about to start for one of the young idiots to pick one up and aim it at her.

They looked like they would hurt.

“Shut up, won’t you?” A peroxide blonde boy who had designated himself the leader of the group barked to the others. “We need this to go good, and they aren’t going to take us serious if you all won’t stop pissing yourselves.”

The group shifted, one girl with short hair in the back speaking up to complain.

“But what if she turns up, Brett? None of us feels like getting jail time for this or being kicked to shit by Outlier.”

The boy, Brett, turned to her with a scowl.

“It’d be fine if you’d have a little faith in me,” he snapped. “Besides, we still got that deal with Daniels going on. No jail time for us.”

Lena frowned, tucking the name away for further enquiries.

“Whatever you say,” the girl muttered in response, still shifting on her feet as the rest of the group quieted.

Brett looked ready to reply, but his head instead whipped around to the entrance of the warehouse as a dark SUV pulled up. Stepping out, a mysterious long-haired man in an impeccable suit flanked by a pair of bodyguards. Lena scanned the man, sizing him up as an opponent and frowned. He had an air of class around him, reeking of money and intelligence. But Lena didn’t recognise him from any of the extensive databases she had set up.

Had a new player entered National City?

The man walked with purpose, pushing past Brett to stare down at the crates of weapons with a discerning eye.

“You promised me twelve,” he said, a deep voice rolling out of his throat easily. “This is five.”

Brett shifted, suddenly looking as nervous as the rest of his people.

“This is all I could sneak out,” he answered. “They’ve been keeping a tighter control on production for a bit now. Outlier-“

“That crusader is nothing but a pest, to my employer’s interests,” the man bit back in reply. “But still, we expect better from a man who gave his word.”

Brett clutched his gun tighter and swallowed. “I did my best. Tell your boss that-“

“She doesn’t do well with excuses, and neither do I,” the unknown man answered coldly, his dark eyes taking in the group of Reds. “And it appears to me that you have let the situation we tasked you with fall totally out of your control.”

Brett shuffled a flare of anger on his face. “Look, we’re doing out best! But that Outlier bitch-“

“Take the weapons,” the man cut in, speaking to his guards. “No payment.”

The men shifted forward quickly, reaching out to pick up the crates even as the group of Reds stepped forward fingering their guns.

“You can’t do that!” Brett shouted. “We need the money-“

“You’re incompetent,” the man cut in, eyeing the Reds as they stood in front of the crates protectively. “And lazy. Why you didn’t even have the brains to post guards in the upper levels of the building.”

Suddenly, the man smiled slyly, his eyes darting upwards and passing over the spot where Lena crouched unseen.

“Come out, come out, Outlier,” he drawled maliciously. “We all know you’re there.”

Before Lena could so much as blink, the man whipped out the gun by his side and the blink of an eye shot Brett square in the forehead. And just like that, chaos erupted. With a loud bang, the windows on the roof shattered and men began to repel through them making Lena swear violently. How could she have missed that? The unknown man had known she would be here, ready to break up this deal, and he had come prepared. Now that their leader was dead, the remaining Reds let out roars and began to fire their guns rapidly — the sounds of gunshots and returning fire from the new men echoing around the walls. Out of time, and with no clue as to how to desecrate the situation without further casualties, Lena jumped over the rail of the floor she was standing on and landed right in the middle of the firefight. Quickly, nearly all the players in the room turned their weapons on her and Lena immediately dived behind a crate to avoid the bullets flying her way. A man followed her quickly, his gun pulling up to shot her and Lena dived to the side before following with a roundhouse kick directly to his stomach, knocking him off his feet. A swift punch to the head and the man was knocked unconscious.

Ducking low, Lena made her way through the crates lining the room, knocking out hiding Reds as she went and bending their guns in half with her hands. It all went well, the symphony of bullets dying until Lena was left breathing with a pounding heart behind a new hiding spot, the unknown man’s voice suddenly ringing out across the room.

“You know, you really would be far scarier without that cone on your head.”

Lena let out her breath, before steadily rising to her feet and stepping out into the light. In front of her, the man stood holding his gun quickly by his side while his remaining men held their aim square at her head while the bodyguards loaded the crates into the car quickly. Lena eyed the movement quickly, assessing her options before she replied.

“Why don’t you tell me your name and who you work for,” she bit back, her anger growing as her eyes flickered down to look at the splattered remains of Brett’s head on the ground. “Then I’ll take my helmet off.”

The man let out a laugh, the casual sound making Lena’s skin crawl.

“You think you’ve filled the place of a near invincible alien,” he replied. “But if the loss of Supergirl proved anything, it’s that all heroes can fall. And you, my dear, are no Supergirl.”

Lena shifted slightly, the guns tracking her movement.

“I never said I was a hero,” she replied. “I’m just trying to do my bit to help this city.”

The man’s lip curled, and if Lena didn’t guess wrong, she could have sworn his eyes flashed with disappointment.

“Oh how very noble,” he responded. “And yet, you’re going to die just as easily as brainless over there.”

Jutting his head in Brett’s direction, Lena was suddenly left to dive once more as bullets cracked through the air again. Letting out a hiss as once hit her leg, no doubt leaving a large bruise, Lena rolled over the concrete before launching back to her feet and throwing one of the smoke bombs she had packed earlier into the middle of the room. A series of coughs sounded out, Lena stepping forward and ready to rush into the fray when a sudden burning in her leg caused her to hiss and drop to her knees. Looking down, she realised that the bullet that had hit her had exploded upon impact. A vial of acid no doubt, eating through her leg armour and burning once it hit the skin of her leg, causing it to bubble under the heat and potency.

“Acid. It’s always acid,” Vera sounded out, completely redundantly.

Lena didn’t have time to think murderous thoughts against the robotic voice, one of the armoured men suddenly upon her. With great difficulty, Lena dived delivered a sharp punch to the man’s knee, and he let out a howl of pain as the sound of it shattering echoed around the room. The rest of the men descended on her, more bullets flying and hitting her side and shoulder, the acid eating through just as quickly as the first bullet. Struggling not to cry, Lena pressed a button on her gauntlet and curled into a ball. Odorous vapes shooting out the vents on her back and causing the men to choke and claw at their throats. Lena grinned to herself, despite her pain, happy that the mild and tweaked toxin she had developed worked and staggered to her feet. Only to swear violently once more, surrounded by dropped bodies, when she realised that the SUV had vanished.

Along with the man and the weapons.

With all the grace of a baby, Lena somehow managed to crash her way back to her penthouse. Narrowly avoiding the police cars that had been called to the scene of the warehouse, no doubt due to the explosive noises that had occurred from the place. Swinging through the streets had caused the agony from her wounds to make her whimper in pain with every arc, even as she tried to favour her non-injured limbs. Falling down the utility hole and into her secret room, Lena stripped out of her now thoroughly damaged armour and limped her way to her minilab.

Slumping down on her stool and rummaging through her still open medical kit. With shaking fingers, she peeled away the film on the gel patch she had developed personally, holding on unsteadily as she looked down at the wound on her leg. A sudden rise of bile grew in her stomach, and she struggled not to vomit, the injury far worse than she feared and still growing. The acid had eaten through enough layers of her skin to hit muscle and already releasing pulsing red, burnt blood to the surface. She pressed the pad to the injury gently, but nothing would prepare her for the agony that the first touch caused even if after a few seconds the pain all by vanished. With tears in her eyes, Lena treated the mimicked wounds on her side and shoulder and lamented the fact that she couldn’t give herself a Harun-El injection so quickly after the one she had gotten yesterday.

Whatever acid they had used, it had been strong. So strong in fact and so fast acting, Lena wondered if it was from Earth. The whole night had been a total disaster, with the final headcount of deaths that Vera had given her being five, four of them Reds. Lena mourned for their deaths, the loss of children always something to regret, and resolved to do her best to help their families for the rest of their lives. It wouldn’t be enough to replace their children, nothing could ever do that, but it might ease the guilt that Lena now felt added to the list in her heart for being stupid enough not to realise she was swinging into a trap. She wondered though how the unknown man, and whoever the hell he was working for, had managed to fool Vera.

Nothing coming up on any scans that the men she had dropped even existed or where present before they arrived. It was worrying, Lena feeling a growing sense of dread in her stomach that whatever had happened tonight was foreshadowing something nasty to come, but she was in so much pain right now and exhausted that she resolved to deal with it in the morning. Limping her way out of her room, the door closing behind her with a quick hiss, she made her way toward the bar in the dark living room. Not even bothering to pour a glass, Lena lifted the whole bottle of the cheap whisky she had been drinking earlier and started to chug it down. Not even wincing against the quick intake or the sharp taste, she dropped the now empty bottle down on the counter and swayed slightly on her feet from the sudden rush of alcohol in her belly and the dull pain still radiating from her wounds.

Staggering once more, Lena wasn’t able to make it to her bedroom, instead falling flat on her face and into her soft couch. Letting out a dull groan at the press on all her wounds, she let out a shuddering sigh and tried to banish the faces of the dead kids in her mind and fell unsteadily into a fitful sleep.

It was the consistent pounding on her door that roused Lena from her sleep the next morning. The woman letting out a deep grunt of pain as the aching in her shoulder, leg, side and now head throbbed in unison. She blinked hazily, eyes reacting poorly to the now light-flooded room and lifted her massive head as the pounding on the door continued. Letting out another groan, Lena sat up painfully and took a deep breath, struggling to stop herself from vomiting all over the floor. Another series of bangs from her door sent her head turning sharply in its direction and made her scowl. Even though she knew logically that the only people who would have been let up to her apartment by security at the door would have been thoroughly vetted and approved by her, Lena still wondered who on earth would have the nerve to demand her attention as much as they wanted it seemingly.

She wondered briefly if it was Alex, the other woman making one of her mandatory and promised trips to Kara before the other woman left, making sure that Lena hadn’t fallen totally in a pit of abject misery and despair. But after the last time they talked, Lena shouting rather loudly that she would rather sleep with a poisonous snake then speak to her again, she highly doubted it.

Unless of course, she had gotten sloppy and Alex had figured out that she was Outlier and had come to lecture her about that.

Standing up unsteadily, Lena scrabbled over to the door with sharp aches of pain all over her body. Sadly these days, this was a natural state for her to wake up in, but Lena didn’t think she would ever grow used to it. Reaching the door, Lena could still feel the vibrations echoing through it and up into her head and let out a sharp bark.

“Whoever you fucking are, piss off. I don’t care if my company is on fire today!”

The pounding stopped, and a voice that sent a sharp chill through Lena’s entire body sounded out from the other side of the door.

“Lena, open the door.”

Eyes widening, Lena did as bid as fast as she could.

Disbelieving her ears and wondering if the acid had eaten it’s way to her brain.

It couldn’t be…

Her breath left her body entirely as she came face to face with blue eyes, eyes that haunted her dreams and nightmares. Kara, looking older and tired, smiled down at her from her height advantage before her eyes began to scan Lena’s body and deep concern grew in them instead. Taking in Lena’s bare leg, the large gel patch on her wounds and the bruises and cut that blossomed over her skin.

“Oh my god, Lena,” she whispered, reaching out slightly before her hand dropped with uncertainty.

Lena just stared at her, still dumbfounded by the other woman’s presence, before her brain finally caught up and with tears in her eyes she pulled Kara into a tight hug. Uncaring at the pain that grew from her wounds, Lena’s eyes began to water for another reason.

“You shouldn’t be back,” she whispered into the blonde’s ear, even though her tight grip on the other woman contradicted her words.

Kara seemed to hesitate for a moment, before folding into her just like she had done a million times before. Her strong arms wrapped around Lena gently, squeezing her as if she was the most precious object on the earth.

“I know…. but I… I missed you,” Kara whispered back into her ear. “And I… I need you now.”

Lena pulled back, still feeling weepy, and stared at Kara. She frowned with concern at the worried tone of the other woman’s voice and immediately determined to be there for her just as she had always been.

“What’s wrong?” She asked. Kara stared down at her, eyes flickering before she took a step backwards and away from Lena. As if she was uncertain how she would react.

“I… We need you.”

Lena’s confusion grew.

“We?” She asked curiously.

Kara nodded, before turning down to the hall and gesturing with her hand.

Lena stepped out of her doorway to look too, her eyes suddenly widening as a small body peeked around the corner and scurried down the to stand by Kara’s side, basically wrapping their little body around Kara’s leg. Lena blinked down at the child, who couldn’t be more than three years old, taking in their long dark hair and bright blue eyes as they stared up at Lena with nervousness, but with an edge of confidence that unnerved Lena deeply. Recognising it, familiarity coursing through her.

“Kara… what’s going on?” Lena asked, looking back up into the other woman’s eyes. Kara took a deep breath, before looking down at the little child and giving her a reassuring smile.

“This is Kieran,” she replied, Lena’s eyes widening at the familiar name.

“She’s….” Kara stumbled over her words and Lena suddenly stepped back in shock as she realised exactly who the child was, her appearance far too similar to her own and her eyes far too much like Kara’s for there to be any mistake.

“She’s our daughter,” Lena finished numbly, before quite literally fainting in shock.

Chapter Text

Lena could feel the breath choking in her throat, the way she woke up from every restless sleep during the past few years. Facing swimming in her mind and haunting her. First, it had been Kara’s face, then an ever collection of people that she had been unable to save in her fight to keep this city clinging to some vestige of its soul. Her eyes snapped open, the lingering smell of death in her nose still causing her lungs to burn with each breath.

And her shoulder, side and thigh still hurt dull and achingly, her mind trying to catch up on what had caused the pain. A memory flashed, acid fired shots from guns that caused even more pain in her life. Staring up at the ceiling, Lena tried to remember where she was for a brief second before a flood of every memory of the night before launched through her. Sitting up, she let out a groan and clutched at the bandage on her side.

Her ears picked up on the soft sound of the TV playing in the background, and she squinted as she stared around what she now recognised as her bedroom. Something often unused these days, given her propensity to either collapse on the couch or the floor of her secret lab after her excursions at night.

Lena’s heart started to pound in her chest at the realisation that Kara had probably somehow gotten her to her bed, and the slightest pray she had in her slipped out the window at the thought. Because if Kara had indeed managed to finagle her into her room, that meant she wasn’t a figment of her imagination. And if she wasn’t a figment of her imagination, then the kid had to exist as well.

A kid, a living breathing little part of herself that was probably in her apartment right now. A kid she had never been told about, and by all the rules of biology shouldn’t exist. It was quite literally physically impossible.

Maybe she had been high on her pain when she proclaimed that the kid was her's. After all, she had been exhausted and still a little drunk at the time. Kara hadn’t confirmed it either, just that they both needed help and then Lena had fainted.

It was all a lot to take in, Kara being back at all and with a child in tow…

With another groan and hiss, Lena stood shakily to her feet, hunching slightly from the pain as she shuffled towards her bedroom door and wrapped herself in a robe. She had no doubt already shown off enough of her skin to Kara, and a child who’s exact lineage was yet to be determined. Opening the door silently, she padded down the hall as quietly as possible towards the loudening sound of the TV.

Rounding the final corner, Lena squinted at the light in the open planned living area and scowled in the direction of the shutters that had been almost permanently closed for the past few years, blocking out the million dollar view that Lena had initially bought this place for. Eyes skating across the room vaguely, her scowl deepening as she took in the newly cleared and cleaned surfaces before they settled on the small figure perched on the edge of the couch.

The girl’s looked thin, far too light for her frame, with a defeated air about her that both reminded Lena unsettlingly of herself and made her sad that hard circumstances were yet another thing that made the confirmation that the girl was hers all the more obvious.

Whatever bouncing drivel that launching out of Lena’s TV in high squeaky voices and at a ridiculous volume had apparently ultimately failed to capture the child’s attention, her vacant stare instead sliding back regularly to the tall and stuffed bookcases lining the far wall, only to guiltily dart back to the screen as if she were internally chiding herself for her curiosity for something intellectual.

A clatter echoing from the kitchen drew Lena’s gaze, sharply looking over to see Kara staring at her with a skillet she was making eggs in half fallen on the marble bench. Even though her mind was filled with fog and the whole situation had Lena doubting her sanity, Lena felt the sudden and familiar rush of breathlessness and longing that Kara always made her feel.

The vague memory of the night before wasn’t enough for Lena’s dehydrated mind. Seeing Kara for a brief minute before she had lost consciousness hadn’t curb her frankly embarrassing addiction to the other woman’s presence. Every single mixed feeling she had towards the other woman rose in her chest, along with so many questions, and a sudden deep desire not to know anything at all so that her life didn’t become even more complicated. Of all the deeply hidden desires, daydreams about her and Kara’s reunion, the sad scenario that they Lena suspected they were both existing in was not one of them.

In an ideal world, Lena wished none of this had ever happened. That Kara still had her powers, and Lena was allowed to process the sting of being lied to in her older and far more familiar way. That eventually they could reconnect reasonably and tentatively renew something. And maybe, at some point, the unspoken thing between them would finally be discussed.

As it were, Lena had to skip her usual self-isolation in the face of apparent betrayal in favour of stewing in her reject and self-disgust at what her brother had done to Kara. Between watching the closest and kindest person in her life spiral into despair and depression, trying desperately to fix it out of a mixture of love and guilt and that single and final night between them before Kara had vanished Lena know longer knew what to feel.

So many things had changed in the past few years. Who she was and what she wanted, the things that she did now… The darkness inside of her that she had so long attempted to distance herself from was now the thing that shrouded her through the entire day and night. And it was all her own. She didn’t want friends or people she cared about. Being alone in the quiet and silence was a comfort now, even as she wallowed — one hundred per cent on precisely what she wanted and needed to focus on.

Losing herself in her mission.

And now, here Kara was. Standing in her kitchen after years away, with a child in tow that Lena knew logically couldn’t exist and staring at her like she was a zombie.

And Lena didn’t know what to say. Her tongue, feeling dry and dense in her mouth, scraped along the roof of her mouth and Lena’s mood darkened once more, and she limped towards the kitchen herself, pushing past the still immobile Kara and opening the fridge. Frowning at the formerly bare shelves, now packed with vegetables far too green for Lena’s taste these days, adding it to the list of annoyances alongside the drawn blinds and the now clean state of her apartment. 

“I see you went out for food,” she said blankly, feeling Kara’s eyes on her back as she continued to stare into the cold appliance.

“You only had one yoghurt in your fridge, and it was off.”

Lena’s mind brushed with lightness at the soft words, even at the slight edge of concern that should have made her angry, but she reached inside and plucked out a beer that had been shoved to the back. Popping the cap and throwing it into the sink, Lena closed the fridge door and leaned against it, taking a long sip of the sour liquid and staring across the room.

Doing everything in her power not to look at Kara directly, or sit under whatever was in her eyes.

“I wasn’t expecting the company,” Lena replied quietly, her eyes drifting around the clean apartment once more and making the deliberate choice to look over the third person in her home as well.  “I see you’ve also done quick work at redecorating.”

Listening with her lingering superhearing to Kara shifting at her words and returning to the pan she had let drop, slowly spooning the eggs she had made onto a prepared plate. In that safety, Lena allowed herself to stare at Kara’s back, reading the tenseness in her shoulders and the cheap quality of the shirt she was wearing. Lena started to let her mind drift from herself for the first time that morning, her self derision and into the slowly burgeoning pool of unknowns that surrounded Kara. Years away and enveloped in her blanket of mysteries and secrets.

Lena’s eyes darted to the girl on the couch once more for a split second, discomfort and uncertainty growing, before looking back at Kara and endeavouring to try and wrap her head around one thing at a time.

“If you call removing the shattered glass and bloodied bandages redecorating,” Lena replied to herself finally.

Kara still didn’t speak, but she did turn. Finally, their eyes met. Lena watched as Kara’s eyes darted down to the open bottle in her hand, the edges of her eyes tensing slightly. There was something guarded about her now, Lena noted.

But she supposed, it would be idiotic to assume that Kara wouldn’t be.

So many years…

Lena looked over to the figure on the couch once more.

So many secrets…

“What are you doing here, Kara?” Lena asked, her eyes turning flinty as she looked back at Kara with a harsh snap.

The other woman stared at her, exhaustion bleeding across her face as it were a bottle of dye that had been knocked over quickly and violently.

“I told you, we need-“

“Help,” Lena cut in, taking another pull of her beer that Kara didn’t even bother to hide her eyes tracking. “Yeah. I remembered that. Before I fainted.”

The reason why Lena had fainted still pretending to watch TV.

Kara let out a heavy breath, taking half a step forward before halting.

“Look, Lena... I’m sure you have a lot of questions-“

Lena cut in again, the swarm of feelings in her mind buzzing like a hive of angry wasps.

“Nope, no questions,” she said breathlessly, anger and panic tinging her voice.

Sculling the rest of her beer, Lena sat it down loudly beside her and glared at Kara with hard fury.

“Don’t know how I could have questions, considering I have nothing to go off to have questions about.”

She wanted to scream suddenly, beg for something — an explanation for everything that was wrong with Kara.

That was wrong with Lena.

And all that was rotten between them.

Kara stared at her with tired eyes, eyes that once would have made Lena want to wrap the other woman in a hug and take every inch of her pain away. But the last time she had done that, one thing had led to another and Kara had left the next day.

A mysterious and the unexpected surprise alongside her.

“Lena, I turned up on your doorstep with our daughter and-“

At the word, the final confirmation that Lena had avoided ever since she had woken, Lena felt a sharp stab in her heart. As if Kara had suddenly stuck a knife into her chest.

“Yeah, I guess I do have a few questions about that…” Lena drawled dangerously. “When you say our daughter… what exactly are you talking about?”

Because this child shouldn’t exist, Lena wanted to shout. The impossibility of it made Lena’s head spin. She didn’t want to believe it.

And yet….

Her eyes couldn’t stop drifting towards that third person in the room that was ultimately, undeniably, not supposed to exist. And yet Lena couldn’t help feel a tug of familiarity in her heart whenever she looked at her. As if this was some forgotten path or secret garden in her life that had sat on the fringes.

There were certain things that Lena knew for sure in life. Elements that were so intrinsically embedded in her DNA. Most of which she had spent her life trying to battle in fear of being too much… Luthor. Her intelligence for one, at least compared to everyone outside of her own family. Her ruthlessness when it came to getting the things she wanted for another.

Her downright foolhardy and irrevocable love for Kara that had left a permanent scar on her heart that would never heal. Watching her now, it just made is ache all the more. Kara who had been god knows where doing who knows what and had kept the existence of a child from Lena’s knowledge.

And Lena was mad about it. But the part of her that was furious was simply an extension of the mountain of anger that had existed in conjunction with Kara ever since she had found out she was Supergirl. Ever since Alex had come to her for help, Lena totally and completely oblivious, rushing to tell her that Lex had kidnapped kara.

That Kara was Supergirl.

Finding Kara broken and bloodied in that dark, cramped cell… Years wasted trying to give Kara back something that Lex had stolen from her. Tortured out of her and left the very foundations of herself ripped apart. And nothing that Lena could do, no matter how much she wanted to, would ever be able to fix it.

It was all so twisted.

Kara let out a soft breath, looking at her with pleading eyes.

“I don’t know how it happened, Lena,” she whispered out. “All I know is that there was nobody else.”

Lena frowned, slightly confused, even though Kara didn’t seem to notice and the fear still lingered in her eyes.

“I didn’t… You were the only person I had sex with in over a year and nine months later… She looks exactly like you, Lena. But I understand if you don’t believe me-“

Lena snorted, the sound surprising Kara and stopping her mid plead.

“Kara, I believe you.”

The other woman looked so relieved at her words, leaving little doubt in Lena’s mind that it had been something that had prayed on her mind for a while. Though she had little confusion as to why, Lena admitted these days freely that she understood far less about the world, then she would have liked to, and even with her lingering issues regarding Kara, she knew that she would never lie about this.

“I don’t understand it, but I believe you,” Lena continued, her voice ragged with a hard edge despite her words.

She clenched her fingers, her nails digging into the skin of her palm.

“What I don’t believe, is why I’m only finding out about this now,” Lena spat, stepping forward into Kara’s space with her fury radiating off her. “Did you only register her existence recently? Or is it born only out of necessity that you tell me now because you need my help?”

Kara stared at her with a worried look, even though she seemed resigned to the words she had expected.

“Lena-“

Lena slammed her hand down on the bench with a hard crunch. Enough the feel the pain radiating up her arm, her lingering super-strength causing a few chips of marble to come away with her bruised knuckles.

“Fuck, Kara!” She swore, enraged to her very veins now. “You didn’t tell me I had a daughter! Why?”

Lena finally allowed to the full dam of confusion and pain fill her heart. A betrayal that stung, even more than the first lie about Kara’s identity. What was she to know about children anyway? But this ran more in-depth than most hidden truths.

And all Kara could do was stare at her with tears in her eyes.

“Tell me!” Lena shouted when she didn’t reply.

Kara ran a shaking hand down her face at the words, breaking their eye contact.

“It’s not easy to explain,” she whispered.

Lena didn’t give a damn.

“Well, you’ve had years to think of an explanation,” she dripped out sarcastically.

And then, for the first time since that morning, Lena saw a glimpse of the old strength that had always run so solidly through every fibre of her. As Kara Danvers and as Supergirl. The exhaustion still sat in every line on her face, but even she stepped forward into Lena’s space until she was half a foot away and staring down at her.

“She shouldn’t exist, Lena,” Kara answered in a whisper. “It’s not possible that she does.

Lena wanted to bit back an answer, but the words were lost on her as Kara’s familiar scent filled her nostrils. Oranges mixed with a crisp bitterness that made Lena’s entire body shudder with remembrance. The last time that smell had been wrapped around her, permeating her sheets and leaving Lena to spend three days holed up in her room for three days after Kara had left so that she could capture the memory internally in her mind before it vanished forever.

Lena watched as Kara lifted her fingers slightly as if to reach out to touch her as well as a memory. Her blue eyes seemed to zone out, filling with darkness and pain.

“I’ve spent years searching for answers,” Kara whispered, her fingers turning and running over her arms with a sight shover as if she was fighting off the sudden cold. 

“A solution to what was taken from me,” she continued, before the air in her lungs seemed to hiss out of her and her eyes finally focused on Lena’s face.

“I didn’t know what would happen if I came back,” Kara continued. “And I would’ve had to come back if you’d known. How could I keep you from her if you’d known?”

Kara bit her lip and shuddered, her voice cracking and breaking.

“I just figured… you couldn’t miss what you didn’t know.”

Lena didn’t even know if she had words left to answer that. Words that she had rehearsed with herself thousands of times couldn’t possibly do justice to the cavern that now lay unveiled between them. Seemingly impossible.

Her energy sapped, Lena let her eyes fall to the floor.

“I accepted when you left, Kara,” she replied exhaustively. “When you snuck out of here without so much as a fucking goodbye, I accepted it. Your need to travel and heal well away from me and all the memories. But this…”

She looked up, feeling on the verge of breaking completely.

“How could you not tell me?”

Kara reached out for her.

“Lena-“

“Are we going to go again, mother?”

The soft words were spoken in an alien tongue that had always managed to simultaneously make the hair stand up on the back of Lena’s neck and stir of memory of foreign fields she had never seen in her mind. Lena’s eyes snapped away from Kara at the sound of them and towards the source. The little girl… Kieran, no longer sitting on the couch but standing a metre from them and staring at Kara with a guarded expression that looked slightly out of place on such a young face. Her previous observation ruffled her, an uneasy feeling at how recognisably related to her the child was. As she stared, unsure, Kara immediately turned away from her to face Kieran and gave her a reassuring smile;

“No, little one,” she answered in Kryptonian as well. “We don’t have to go anywhere. We’re safe here.”

Kieran frowned slightly, a crease growing between her eyebrows.

“Then why were you shouting?”

It might have been a question, but Lena was too astute not to pick up on the vein of unreasonable demand in her voice. Kara, in turn, let out a slight breath at the words, stepping forward and placing a gentle hand on the girl’s shoulder as she half-crouched.

“We weren’t shouting…” She replied gently, before pointing to Lena and giving Kieran an encouraging smile. “Little one, I told you who this is.”

For the first time, Kieran looked over at Lena and their eyes locked.

Lena hadn’t spent much time around children, and she would easily be the first to admit she had zero clues what interacting with one was like, but there was something strangely unnerving in the child’s blue eyes. A hard edge that mimicked the guarded and slightly aggressive air she was projecting. Lena tilted her head slightly, curiosity and concern mingling as she watched Kieran shift slightly until she had placed herself between Lena and Kara.

As if she was guarding her.

That was strange.

They continued to watch each other; Lena did not doubt that Kieran was forming opinions just like herself.

“She looks angry,” Kieran said suddenly in Kryptonian, still staring at Lena but talking to Kara.

Lena schooled her expression, so she didn’t react to the words, the child not comprehending that she completely understood the alien language that she was speaking in.

Kara frowned and criticised her for her words.

“Don’t say that.”

Kieran didn’t even blink.

“Why not?” She questioned.

Lena arched an eyebrow.

“Because you should never speak about people in front of them in another language,” she cut in, halting whatever reply Kara was about to make. “You don’t know if they understand it.”

Kara looked shocked at the sound of Lena speaking her mother tongue, her eyes widening in surprise. Kieran though didn’t react at all beyond narrowed eyes and a vaguely inquisitive look. Lena’s curiosity and unease grew in her chest, an instinct inside her rubbed the wrong way. There was something very different about this child. Abnormal in a particular non-human way.

“Lena, you speak Kryptonian?”

Lena shrugged, slightly annoyed by the surprise in Kara’s voice and the break in her thoughts.

“I had to do something while you were away,” she grumbled, crossing her arms.

Kieran spoke up before Kara could reply.

“Are you my mother?” She asked bluntly, the single English word breaking the smoothness of the alien language easily. “Yeyu said you were.”

Lena’s frown deepened as she stared at the child, an uncomfortable prickle in her heart growing at being referred to in that way. Her experiences with her mother had never been mainly positive. A few years ago, she may have harboured the slight fantasy and idea that she would be a parent, but she’d freely admit that it had never been a particular priority of hers for a multitude of reasons. And after everything that had occurred of the past few years, and the person she had finally realised herself as, Lena knew for sure that she neither wanted or would be a parent.

The irony of always getting the opposite of everything once she made up her mind on something wasn’t lost on her at all.

But still, the child that she knew was and looked like a toddler hardly behaved as such. Her voice while still youthful was filled with gravitas and weariness that was unnatural. Even beyond what she knew she had displayed as a child experiencing extreme trauma. And the intelligence that practically radiated off her, confirming in Lena’s mind once more of Kieran’s parentage, still seemed keen enough to rival people three times her age. Perhaps though she was projecting. After all, she had only known the kid for half an hour.

But Lena’s first impressions of people were rarely wrong.

“What else did she tell you about me?” Lena asked, dogging the question Kieran had asked her.

There it was again, a flash of slight uncertainty that mimicked the fear causing the child to cling to Kara’s leg the night before. Her eyes looked up to Kara briefly, the woman giving the girl an encouraging smile, before Kieran looked back at Lena.

“That you were kind, and smart and beautiful,” she replied frankly. “That you were changing the world.”

Lena arched an eyebrow at the words, the cynical part of her wondering if Kara had coached Kieran in that reply to foster sympathy. But looking up at the other woman and her earnest face, filled with softness and worry as she held her daughter’s shoulder firm, the doubts slipped from Lena’s mind.

Turning to look back at the little girl, Lena jutted her chin forward slightly.

“How old are you?” Lena asked.

“Three.”

Lena accepted it with a slow nod, still staring hard at the girl.

“You don’t sound three.”

The edge of accusation in her voice wasn’t directed at the child but at Kara. Her eyes sliding to the woman with a hard edge, conveying her assumptions hopefully that she could see as plain as the nose on her face that something extraordinary an unchildlike about Kieran.

Kara seemed to register the unsaid things easily, her brow furrowing she stood to her full height once more.

“Lena, please,” she answered in place of the child. “There… there’s a lot to be said, but not here. Not in front of Kieran.”

Lena scowled at the words.

“Are we keeping secrets again?” She spat out venomously.

For the first time that morning, for the first time she could remember in years, Kara suddenly looked furious. Her face flooding with anger and her lips curled into a snarl.

Taking on a defensive posture, her shoulders turned rigid.

“I don’t know what you’ve been doing either for the past few years either, Lena,” she rounded out, looking her up and down critically. “Covered in bruises and scars and wounds-“

“Because you haven’t been here, Kara!” Lena shouted out, her fury bubbling over now.

What right did Kara have to comment on her body? Or on anything that she may or may not have been doing for the past few years?

“I don’t owe you an explanation for the way I’ve been living my life any more than you do,” Lena hissed out. “But you should have fucking told me I had a daughter.”

Kara’s scowl deepened, her face slowly turning red.

“Don’t swear in front of her.”

The words were uttered so lowly and seriously that Lena felt a twinge of regret and she shut her mouth, lips were drawn in a thin, sulky, line. Her eyes flickered down to the girl, who was still watching her with those unnerving and piercing eyes.

Oddly, a slight swell of affection grew in her heart.

Looking back at Kara now, the other woman still stared at her with hardened eyes.

“I came to you now, because we need you,” she uttered plainly. “I can’t…”

Her words trailing, Lena didn’t miss the slight squeeze of her fingers on Kieran’s shoulder.

“I can’t protect her by myself anymore,” Kara finished. “Not the way you can. We don’t have your resources or contacts.”

Lena wondered at the meaning behind Kara’s words, and the slight edge of fear in her voice. Her mind cleared slightly of the fog that had lingered the whole morning, the vein of concern towards the years that Kara had spent away from growing in her mind. A fierce protectiveness swelled in her chest, watching as the stress in Kara’s face mingled with pain.

“We’ve been travelling for so long… I didn’t want Kieran growing up anymore without a home or knowing who you were.”

Lena closed her eyes at that, before turning her back to the pair and walking away to create the illusion of some distance between herself and all the emotions she felt that she had repressed for so long. Memories of hours spent in half whispers together. Test after test after test. The way Kara leaned against her those first few months after she had lost her powers, still unused to living a life without them.

The day she had finally woken up from her induced coma and squeezed Lena’s hand.

She let out a long breath.

“Who else knows you’re back?” She questioned, her back still turned.

“No one,” Kara breathed out. “Just you.”

That surprised Lena, enough for her to turn around.

“Not even your sister?” Lena arched an eyebrow once more.

Kara looked pained, swallowed and shook her head.

“No.”

Lena thought for a second, her last argument with Alex lingering in her mind along with the other woman’s insistence that no, she hadn’t had any contact with Kara. Something the Luthor Lizard part of Lena’s brain flat out refused to believe.

“Did she know?” Lena questioned, jutting her chin in Kieran’s direction. “About…”

The child scowled, the first real expression Lena had seen from the girl, probably at the way Lena discussed her.

Kara shook her head once more, regret filling her face.

“No,” she answered softer. “Nobody knew. It’s not easy to explain.”

For the first time, mixed with her hurt Lena did feel a wave of empathy for Kara. To be all alone and pregnant, travelling the world with no friends or family and then with a child… Lena had concocted many scenarios in her mind regarding what Kara could be doing for so many years, but given the limited information she had received from Kara that morning alongside her observations, darker thoughts began to form. The fear in her face and voice, the way she almost begged for help and protection along with Kieran’s strange nature made her concerned. The protective instinct inside her swelled, and she suddenly envisioned herself hugging Kara the way she had last night when she was drunk on her pain, loneliness and alcohol. But in the end, the warm reunion the childish part of her wishes they could have give way to reality. The fact was Kara had hidden her pregnancy from her, running away before Lena even had a chance to open her eyes. And Lena couldn’t help but wonder if Kara would ever have bothered to return if she wasn’t desperate and running away from something else and back into Lena’s home.

Lena also couldn’t disregard that Kara’s return raised even more problems in her life than the ones she already had to contend with. How she spent her nights chiefly among them, along with the problems, this city faced. Lena didn’t need anything to distract her from the dire nature of National City along with the new threat that had appeared last night; one Lena feared it would swell to be the most dangerous she had to face thus far. Brushes with death had occurred her entire life, but last night she had come with a hairsbreadth of it. Looking at Kara and the kid now, Lena frankly wanted to keep those particular cards close to her chest. A selfish urge to harbour her secrets after the Supergirl reveal maybe, but more so because she didn’t need any outside interference.

In the end, wobbly daydream shattered and made way for her ever-burgeoning anger and slight panic.

“The fact that we… managed to produce a child!?” She scoffed suddenly, snorting in derision. “What’s not believable about that!”

Kara frowned at her.

“I think I preferred you when you were less of a sarcastic asshole,” she dripped out darkly.

A nasty part of Lena’s mind wanted to point out the hypocrisy of Kara’s swearing, but she instead proceeded to twist the knife of Kara’s lie tighter.

“And I think I preferred it when I was oblivious to the fact that you’ve been keeping my daughter's existence from me!”

Without warning, Kieran suddenly let out a loud an emotional shout.

“Stop yelling!”

Lena’s anger stopped in its tracks, looking at the girl and feeling ashamed and uncomfortable once more. She was not well versed in how to behave around children, but she should know better than most how it felt to have parents screaming in front of her and to feel like a constant afterthought to every conversation about her that simultaneously occurred in front of her.

Kara seemed equally as regretful, letting out a tired breath and turning back to her daughter.

“I’m sorry, little one,” she whispered out, a slight waver in her voice. “We didn’t mean to yell.”

The same way she had done last night, the now clearly upset Kieran wrapped herself around Kara’s leg and hugged her tight. Lena wondered if it was for her comfort or Kara’s before she looked up to Lena with a harsh glare.

“She did.”

Lena was slightly startled by the anger that radiated from a three-year-old, even if a part of herself was somewhat impressed, but she schooled her features not to let it show. Instead, she frowned in turn and spoke quietly in reply.

“She has a name.” A half grumble, but the truth.

That uncomfortable feeling grew once more, realising she hadn’t told Kieran a term she wanted to be addressed by.

“But… don’t call me…”

She paused, the scary word ‘mother’ lingering on her tongue before she coughed it away.

“Call me, Lena,” she finished. “For now.”

The girl continued to glare at her.

“I don’t like you.”

Lena supposed she should feel offended, but she could hardly blame the girl given the reception she had given her so far.

“I don’t expect you too,” she answered blithely, before looking back at Kara. Uncomfortable still under the child’s gaze

“You said you needed my protection?” She asked briskly, her mode shifting into businesslike. Shielding emotions away behind a well-used wall. “Why?”

Kara’s gear seemed to shift as well, her face growing stronger and for a brief second Lena saw her as Supergirl.

And kicked herself for the millionth time at not guessing her alter ego earlier.

“Because I have a half Kryptonian daughter developing powers, and there’s nothing I can do to save her from the people who would exploit that… and her,” Kara replied.

There was a lot to dive into there, many questions raised by that simple statement. But Lena was still trying to process the information that she had received thus far and decided that at least for today, she wasn’t going to press Kara for more answers that she was reluctant to give.

After all, if she asked questions so would Kara.

“You can stay here,” Lena finally said, the choice already made that she would.

The relief on Kara’s face read clear, but Lena knew that she could never find it in herself to throw Kara out no matter how mad she was. Despite everything, Lena would always cling to the fact that she viewed Kara as a family. Looking to Kieran, she supposed that it was now legitimised through the child.

“But you’re right,” she continued, brushing past Kara and walking away. “There is a lot not being said. For now, I need to run some tests. On both of you. Years… away, who knows what’s happening in either of your bodies.”

A list of things, patterns and ideas blossomed in her mind pushing away the fog all of a sudden. The things she needed to accomplish today ordering itself in her mind just like it always had every morning of her adult life.

Kara followed behind her, down the hallway as Lena made her way back to her room.

“Tests? Lena, I don’t-“

Lena whipped around at that, staring at Kara with cold eyes.

“For God’s sake, Kara. Please let me handle this the only way I know how.”

Kara seemed to be torn, but Lena refused to waver. Finally, Kara looked to her daughter, Kieran having followed her down the hall.

“Little one, your mother and I-“

Lena cut in.

“Lena.”

Kara nodded if slightly disappointed at the insistence on Lena’s part.

“Lena and I want to make sure that you’re ok. Healthy, you know. On the inside. She wants to make sure I am too.”

Kieran pondered the words for a bit, eyes flinty and far too aged.

“I don’t like her.”

Lena was growing slightly annoyed at that, but Kara just smiled slightly.

“You don’t know her, little one,” Kara insisted. “She just wants to make sure that we’re both safe.”

Kieran paused for a long minute, Lena and Kara both waiting for her reply before she nodded reluctantly.

“Ok.”

Lena resisted the urge to grumble once more at the time they were wasting and instead looked to the child.

“Do you speak a human language?” She asked briskly, having only heard the smooth Kryptonian fall from the small child’s lips.

The girl glared up at her.

“Yes,” she muttered in English, Lena feeling a flicker of surprise at the slight Irish lit in her voice and filing that information away along with everything else.

“Good,” she replied starkly. “Don’t talk in Kryptonian where we’re going. I don’t want everyone guessing at who you are.”

Before either of them could reply, Lena walked into her room and shut the door behind her. Finally able to let out a long and heavy breath, she leaned back against it and listened as both Kara and Kieran walked away. Suddenly feeling overwhelmed, her whole body began to shake. The pain she had been holding back from her wounds hitting her full force at the same time.

Kara had seemed shocked by her drastic change in wardrobe since she had last seen her, her eyebrows almost hitting her hairline when she walked out of her bedroom with aviator sunglasses, thick heavy shoes, jeans and a heavy leather jacket. Lena wasn’t insulted by the shock, though the bright side of her noticed the way Kara’s eyes tracked her whole body. Five years Lena never would have imagined herself sporting the grunge look, having been taught her entire life that to command respect in a man’s man’s world, she had to weaponise her femininity and looks. Power suits, heels, red lipstick and tight dresses. Everything was about gaining control, attention and playing the game. It wasn’t that Lena didn’t enjoy it either. Existing in the realm of what her family expected, or rather her mother had long since moved past resentment to personal enjoyment. It didn’t matter if people liked her, only that they respected her.

But when everything changed… well, everything changed. No longer in the public eye, playing the face of the company even though she was deadly serious in keeping the role of CEO, she’d instead exude the personality that she now felt she was. No longer weaponising anything, rather no longer giving a flying fuck if anyone respected her or not.

She didn’t need them to respect her anymore.

One Uber ride later, having dispensed of her driver along with the majority of her fortune, Lena, Kara and Kieran arrived at the front entrance of L-Corp. Lena looked up at the imposing, sleek and modern building that she had so painstakingly invested so much of her time into and felt a slight curdle of despair in her heart at the path her life had taken her on. Shaking it off, she strode through the entrance peripherally aware that Kara was following her while carrying Kieran on her hip.

They had barely made it halfway through the busy lobby, people parting away to avoid her path when she spotted her fervent CFO sitting on one of the guest lounges with a stack of paperwork on his knees, and Lena instantly felt a headache grow alongside an ominous throb from her thigh injury. The second the man spotted her, he stood to his feet.

“Ms Luthor-“

Lena let out a loud groan, glad that the man couldn’t see her roll her eyes behind her sunglasses.

“Oh, God… what do you want?” She answered, dodging him as he tried to block her path and continued towards the elevator.

“Ms Luthor,” he called half a step behind her. “You’re still the CEO. You can’t avoid me forever.”

Lena looked back over her shoulder, noting his frustration and Kara’s confused and slightly bemused face as she continued to follow behind.

“I’ve been doing a pretty good job thus far,” she drawled in reply, her steps continuing.

They reached the elevator and Lena all but slammed the down button. Troy shuffled some of the papers in his arms, taking advantage of her halt and all but shoving a stained yellow paper in her face.

“These wage hikes you’ve instituted, on a menu from Big Belly Burger no less, you can’t surely mean them?” He questioned, his voice cracking slightly.

Lena let out a sigh, cursing the slow nature of the L-Corp elevators and resolving to solve the issue if she had to personally. Turning to look at the man, she felt a small wave of amusement at his taut expression. She had hired Troy Stack for the job of CFO a few years ago, about a year after Kara had left and she was preparing to shift the company in a far more ethical direction. The man had been low level, middle management when she plucked him from Lord Technologies. He had a wide range of experience and was far overqualified for the position, a fact she learned was due to his highly moral scruples and fundamental inability to lie. The board had been outraged at her giving him the job, but considering she did the same with half of them that she could within the next three months it did little to bother her. But even though the man was relentless in his desire to be moral, she had more than tested the line on that front with him causing him more than a few grey hairs.

“Of course I meant it,” she replied obviously. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have sent them to you. And I want them instituted before the end of the quarter.”

Pressing the button furiously again, not in the mood today of all days to deal with complaints about her socialist agenda.

“You’ve stopped all bonuses to the board and have raised the wages of or middle and low tier employees by half the wage they’re on now.”

Lena seriously wondered why people always seemed to insist on reacting back her own decisions to her as if she wasn’t aware that she made them. Taking off her glasses, she gave him a flat stare and internally railed against his redundant words.

“If we can’t afford to pay our workers a living wage, then we can’t afford to be in business,” she said in a bored tone. "Nobody who works for me should go home starving. I was appalled upon reviewing the numbers that I had let this festering rot go on under my nose for so long.”

The man grimaced, and she could see that he agreed with her, even though she didn’t envy the fight he had ahead of him dealing with the top executives.

“You can’t just cut the wages of the board!” He squeaked, the high pitched sound contrasting with his usual broad and stoic demeanour.

“Why not?” She asked with a scoff. “Are they not getting enough? Does Henderson need another yacht? Or does Cecilia need it to bribe some dean to get her son to get into a sixth Ivy League after he was expelled from the last five?”

His troubled and conflicted frown deepened, and the elevator doors finally opened with a smooth ding. Stepping inside and ushering Kara and Kieran in with her, she glared at the two sharply dressed people ready to step in with them until they turned on their heels and walked away. Her CFO suddenly seemed to register Kara and the child, giving them an intrigued glance and Lena cursed the man’s sharp eyes, daring him to ask a single question.

“I lead by example, Troy,” she answered deftly. “I haven’t accepted a wage for years. Simply put, I don’t need the money.”

The doors, starting to close, were blocked by Troy’s arm.

“Ms Luthor,” he said exhaustedly and warningly. “The shareholders won’t be happy. Our employees already get an incredibly generous health package, and their wages are scaled under our loyalty clause in their contract-“

“Thank you, Troy…” she drawled sarcastically. “For bringing that up. I also have some changes I want to be instituted regarding health insurance. In particular, the fact that it should be better.”

The man gave her a pleading look, but he dropped his arm and nodded in acceptance. The doors closed with a ding, leaving the three of them in silence at it slowly began to descend.

“What was that all about?” Kara asked after a few quiet seconds.

Lena gave her a side-eyed look, aware that Kieran was watching her with interest.

“Troy just doesn’t enjoy that half his job these days is to make sure the board doesn’t force me out of my own company,” she replied. “He’s a good man, but he’s still unable to see the bigger picture.”

Kara tilted her head, readjusting her grip on Kieran.

“Which is?”

The corner of Lena’s mouth twisted upwards, even though her reply came of harshly and resentful.

“That the world has enough selfish bastards that don’t need more money than God, especially when the money has been laundered through the exhausted hours of those they deem beneath them.”

Kara just stared at her, and Lena wondered at what she was thinking. Possibly the same as her, contemplating all the things that had changed between them and within themselves.

“When did you become a socialist?” She suddenly asked.

Lena snorted, hardly viewing herself as a socialist given her desperate propensity and desire to be left entirely and alone. Looking sideways at Kara and the girl, Lena grumbled internally at how that plan was now totally shot to hell.

“Around about the time philanthropy didn’t cut it for me anymore,” she answered dryly.

The door opened, finally landing them on the bottom floor. They both stepped out, walking down the hallway and beginning a series of security doors she had in place. Lena keeping one eye on Kieran who, despite a still blank face, eyes lit up with interest with each step. Finally, the final door opened and revealed the vast and messy space of her lab. Cartons of food lay scattered over bench tops, cleaners not being allowed in here, intermingled with the greasy tools and mechanical parts. Half the room was dedicated to blueprint designs, pieces of custom designed armour and glider parts. The other half to various chemical concoctions, medical equipment and different other half built machines she had in the pipeline for L-Corp officially.

She was still watching Kara’s expression, her heart rate picking up slightly when Kara looked around the room, and her eyes drifted over the armour plating and glider parts. Thankfully, the interest in her eyes didn’t pick up, and her eyes moved over to the other side of the room as she continued to follow Lena into the room and towards a gurney. 

"Come on,” Lena muttered. “Let’s get down to business.”

She shrugged off her jacket and slipped on a lab coat, scrubbing vaguely at the green stain down her front who’s origin was unknown. Either a sample of Fluvian saliva or pea soup.

“Is this where you work?” Kara asked, in a slightly concerned voice as she eyed an empty Chinese takeaway container slowly growing mould.

Lena eyed the box too, oddly not feeling the slightest hint of shame.

“Yes,” she answered. “Sometimes, when I need the equipment.”

There was a slight pause, before Lena smile and pointed at the takeout.

“That’s for science.”

Kara let out a slight laugh, before gently placing Kieran down on the gurney, the girl kicking her feet slightly in the air. Lena tilted her head, intrigued that for the first time she was acting her age. The girl looked around her, delight in her face that lightened her eyes, the wariness dropping slightly.

“What do you make?” She suddenly asked, her fingers reaching out for a fist-sized piece of equipment.

“Don’t touch that,” Lena suddenly sounded, snapping it up herself and putting it on the bench behind her.

“Sit still there,” she commanded, the little girl scowled.

Lena walked over to one of her secure cases, swiping some of the dust off of it, before opening it with a fingerprint scan.

“Is she resistant to Kryptonite or not?” She asked over her shoulder.

There was a long pause, Lena registering it along with all the other snippets of information before  Kara replied.

“I don’t know.”

Lena frowned at that, wondering if it was the truth. Plucking out one of the Kryptonite needles she had specially designed for Kara before turning back to look the girl and Kara.

“Fantastic,” she drawled.

Reaching out for Kieran’s arms, she tightened a band around her upper arm and searched for a vein. She prepared to enter the needle before she hesitated to realise that she had never actually asked Kieran’s permission.

Looking at the girl in the eyes, she felt uncertain again.

“Is this… is it ok if I draw some blood? It might sting a little.”

The child watched her, growing slightly.

“It’ll hurt?” She asked softly, holding out her arm for Lena to take.

Lena smiled gently, feeling an urge to reassure.

“Only a little,” she answered, reaching out to take the proffered arm and rubbing slow circles at her skin the same way that she remembered doing to Kara to calm her down.  “But you know, sometimes when I got needles when I was your age, I used to cry. And it’s ok if you do.”

Kieran shook her head vehemently, disputing that she would, and Lena’s smile widened at her bravery.

“It must be pretty strange for you to be here, huh?” She questioned the girl softly.

Kieran looked at her with wavering and mistrustful eyes, before she shrugged.

“A little,” she answered. “But it’s ok, even if you are grumpy.”

Lena snorted at that, though she didn’t disagree.

“Hmm, I’m not what you expected, huh?” She teased.

Kieran flushed slightly, and Lena could practically hear Kara smiling behind her.

“Yeyu said you were… nice.”

Lena worried at the inside of her cheek, bitterness growing in her heart at the words alone with a vague sense that she had disappointed the girl. She wondered what version of herself Kara had painted in the child’s head, and rumbled to herself that the girl had never gotten a chance to know her or vice versa because of Kara’s choice to not tell her.

She couldn’t understand why.

“Well, maybe once…” Lena replied even gentler. “But right now, I just want to make sure you and your Yeyu are healthy and safe, ok?”

Kieran bit her lower lip, and Lena flashed her a toothier grin. The girl seemed swayed at that, nodding in turn.

“Ok. You can start now.”

“Already done. See?”

Lena held up the syringe showcasing the blood she had already drawn and patted Kieran’s knee.

“It wasn’t so bad, was it?” she asked lightly.

Kieran shook her head, looking down at her arm which had already healed once the needle was away from her skin. Lena removed the band and out of the corner of her eye noted Kara staring at her with a strange expression in her eyes. Lena shifted awkwardly, before looking back at Kieran and scratching the back of her neck.

“You think you could tell me a little bit about yourself?” She asked. “You seem pretty smart. What’s your favourite thing to do?”

The kid didn’t hesitate to reply.

“Eat.”

Lena laughed suddenly and deeper then she had in years at the word.

“Well, I can guess where you got that from,” she replied, side-eyeing Kara and shooting her a smile. “What’s your favourite thing to eat?”

Kieran’s expression lightened.

“Potstickers,” she replied. “We had real ones when we were in Beijing.”

Lena blinked at that.

“You’ve been to China?” She questioned.

Kieran nodded keenly.

“We’ve been everywhere. Before…”

Her face darkened suddenly, and her eyes flitted to Kara before they cast downwards.

Lena frowned.

“Before?” She pressed.

Kieran’s mouth tightened, and Lena looked over to Kara, her frown deepening at the haunted look on her face. Dark feelings and images flashed in her mind, fear as well. The idea of the bad things in this world infecting either of them made her angry, but it would be naive of her to assume that the unspoken stuff that Kara didn’t want to talk about today was as worrisome as her problems.

More so maybe.

“We don’t talk about it,” Kieran finished when she looked at the girl.

Lena smiled, trying to smooth away the wrinkles of pain.

“That's ok,” she replied gently. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. Can you tell me what else you like to do instead? Apart from eating.”

The girl’s expression cleared slightly, and she looked somewhat embarrassed.

“I like to read.”

Lena wondered at her behaviour, smiling wider.

“I like to read too!” She exclaimed, trying to inject more positivity in her words. “What’s your favourite thing to read?”

The girl smiled.

“Great Expectations.”

Lena’s eyes widened.

“That’s… a good book,” she mumbled. “How old are you again, Keiran?”

The girl looked at her like she was stupid for not remembering.

“Three.”

“You’re three, and you’ve read Great Expectations?”

Kieran shrugged.

“Yes.”

Lena stared at her and wondered a great many things.

“Smart indeed.”

Lena stood shoulder to shoulder with Kara, feeling slightly awkward and entirely unsure of what to say as they watched Kieran inside the Kryptonian grade soundproof chamber — slowly being tested for various things. Solar radiation, her resistance to red sunlight mostly. Devices Lena had personally designed covering her skin and measuring the results.

The girl kept trumping standards, displaying results that she wondered at and frowned. Pressing a series of buttons on her tablet as she downloaded the results. Side-eyeing Kara next to her who was watching Kieran with keen and focused eyes, the protectiveness practically radiating off her skin, Lena felt compelled to use the slight break from Kieran’s presence to probe her with some questions.

“So, are you going to tell me the real reason why you came to me instead of your sister?” Lena asked briskly, stepping around Kara to place her tablet on a bench and avoid her gaze. “You know you’d have the full might of the DEO to protect you if you had. I’m just one woman.”

Lena paused, waiting for Kara’s reply. But all she got was silence until she steeled herself to turn and look at her. Kara was still intently staring at Kieran, but the pained expression on her face indicated that she had heard Lena.

“I trust Alex,” Kara sounded out finally. “But I… don’t want Kieran’s abilities to be on any governments record.”

Lena wholeheartedly agreed with Kara’s point, though she wondered why she had made it. After all, in the entirety of knowing Kara, Lena knew that she had the utmost faith and trust in her sister. Something else, on top of all the something else’s, must have shaken her not to trust her now. Though keeping Kieran and her powers away from any record, at least while she was a child and would have trouble hiding her identity, was a preference of Lena’s for sure.

“I understand that,” Lena nodded. “But we’re going to have to figure out some cover story for her if you’re going to stay with me.”

Kara looked over at her at that with tired eyes, but Lena had no qualms about insisting on her point.

“Living with a Luthor isn’t going to go unnoticed,” Lena shrugged, seeing no point in dancing around the issue. “And I can bet that Troy has already hired someone to find out who you are. Once they discover that you’re an ex-journalist who vanished off the radar nearly four years ago, the press won’t be far behind.”

Lena scowled, leaning against the bench and crossing her arms at the very thought of the vultures descending.

“They’re already obsessed enough with me ever since I backed down from the face of the company,” Lena grunted.

Kara let out a tired sigh, running a hand down her face and pinching the bridge of her nose before she nodded reluctantly in agreement. Lena let out her breath, happy that it wouldn’t be another problem between them. Kara glanced at Kieran once more, she who was proceeding to bend a series of metal bars like they were made of butter into pretzel shapes. Turning to face Lena, she walked over to her side and leaned against the bench in turn. Lena felt a prickle of discomfort at her closeness, along with a current of electricity that stirred something inside her that she had forgotten Kara always managed to spark in her.

“You’re taking this better than you did this morning,” Kara sounded out.

Lena wasn’t preened by the words, turning her head to glare at Kara with hard eyes.

“Secrets are less important to me than the immediate need to make sure both of you are safe,” she bit out pointedly. “If you think you need me, then I’ll help as best as I can.”

Kara’s eyes grew saddened.

“Lena-“

She cut her off, pushing away and creating distance between them.

“I don’t think I can take any more apologies from you today, Kara,” she spat. “Or half baked explanations you’ve probably concocted. For now, can we… just let it stay where we are until I have time to come to terms with the fact that I have a daughter?”

Kara oversaw her.

“Will you come to terms with it?”

Lena’s tablet binged, she picked it up to view the result of a test.

“Well,” she drawled. “The maternity test was positive.”

Kara looked slightly affronted if resigned.

“I thought you said you believed me?”

Lena waved a hand distractedly.

“I do. Now I doubly do,” she insisted, placing the tablet aside. “And there is definite Kryptonian DNA in her too. She showed resistance to Kryptonite, but the normal needles I tested out on her didn’t penetrate her skin which leads me to believe that despite your powers being… gone, your children clearly can still inherit them. Along with her raising hell in there of course.”

Lena pointed towards Kieran, who was now blowing cold air in the room and dropping it’s internal temperature significantly.

“She’s been developing powers since she was born,” Kara whispered, looking at her daughter softly. “I caught her hovering in her sleep more than once, but she hasn’t been able to do it awake yet. Or she doesn’t want to.”

That last sentence caught Lena’s attention, bringing up a series of other questions she had been cataloguing the entire day.

“Why is she so advanced for her age?” Lena demanded more than asked. “Granted, I haven’t spent a lot of time around three-year-olds, but even I can see that mentally she is far older than she appears.”

Kara turned her head away from her.

“She’s always been bright,” she answered, shrugging as if it was of no importance. “I guess initially I thought she inherited it from you, but maybe it’s also the circumstances of her life. She picks up on everything so quickly. Her math is already so advanced, and her memory is… far better then I would prefer.”

Lena stepped forward at that, rounding Kara until she could stare her directly at her face, so she didn’t miss her expressions.

“Why is that?” She asked, searching the other woman’s eyes intently.

She could see darkness in them, the pain too as well as sadness and fear.

“A lot has happened, Lena,” she replied in a weary voice. “Things that we’re running from.”

Lena let the words mull, resisting the urge to reassure when she wasn’t sure what she was encouraging about. In an ideal world, she would tell Kara that everything would be ok now. But Lena was no white knight, and she no longer deluded herself by pretending to be one. No one could protect anyone in her experience, and it was foolish to lie about it.

“And now you landed here… Running away from running away,” Lena dryly replied.

Kara almost bristled at her words.

“And what have you been doing, Lena?” She hissed out. “You’ve… you’ve changed.”

Lena dared her to continue, no doubt leading another argument that was brewing between them.

“A lot has happened,” Lena blithely replied, a haughty expression on her face.

Kara pursed her lips.

“And you don’t want to tell me about it?”

Lena’s anger flared, her eyebrow arching.

“Do you want to tell me what you’re running away from?” She responded with venom.

Kara reeled back, her eyes shadowed once more.

“Monsters in the dark…” She whispered out bitterly.

Lena felt.. ashamed. She wondered if she should, but when it came to Kara, there was rarely any scenario when at least a small part of her didn’t feel protective and longing toward the other woman. A light half that mirrored the warped loneliness and emptiness inside her. Lena knew that despite everything, she had given her heart away to Kara a long time ago and she would never get it back.

She didn’t want it back.

Lena deflated totally when a tear ran down Kara’s cheek, one she tried to hide and wipe away. Before she could though, Lena caught her fingers and drew Kara’s attention back to her with a snap. Staring at her softly, locked eyes and the electricity lit between them once more. Reaching out slowly, Lena captured the tear herself, her finger tracing of Kara’s cheek which was soft as the day she left.

Slowly she let it fall along her neck lightly and drifting over her collarbone before she heard Kara’s breath hitch. Feeling mixed once more, Lena swallowed and dropped her hand.

“Are you sure you don’t want any tests?” Lena asked gently. “To see if anything has changed with your… situation?”

It was the greatest shame and disappointment Lena had ever experienced, her inability to give back to Kara what her brother had stolen and ripped out from her. The resigned despair in Kara’s eyes when she brokenly insisted on stopping trying would haunt Lena’s nightmares for the rest of her life.

Kara seemed to shake herself from distraction, Lena noticing the fleeting longing before sadness filled them once more.

“No,” she insisted. “I know nothing has. And after years of looking… I think it’s time I accepted it.”

If Lena knew her at all, she knew that Kara wasn’t telling her something. But… she pushed it away once more.

Stepping back, Lena turned away.

“You have to tell your sister that you’re back,” she insisted gruffly. “Even if you don’t want the DEO to know, she has a right to.”

Startling, Lena shivered when she felt Kara’s strong fingers touch her shoulder.

“I know…” Kara whispered, trailing down her touch until she reached the small of Lena’s back. “I just wanted to be with you first.”

Lena closed her eyes, letting herself revel in the touch far longer than she should before stepping forward from it with a shudder and unlocking a nearby drawer. Biting her lip, she pulled out a small, lightweight gun. The tablet beeped finally, the last of the results recorded and the glass doors on Kieran’s containment opening and allowing the girl to walk out and towards them both. 

“I need to do some more things here…” Lena sounded out, before turning and holding the gun out to Kara. “But take this. Do you know how to use it?”

Kara stared down at the gun blankly, as did Kieran once she stood by her side. A full thirty seconds must have passed before she accepted it.

“Yes,” she replied slipping it into her messenger bag and closing it deliberately.

Lena nodded, relieved that at least Kara would have some personal protection. Having zero desire to either her or the girl come to harm.

“Good,” Lena replied gruffly, eyes darting to Kieran before looking back to Kara. They stared at each other for a few more awkward seconds, before Lena turned and walked toward one of her microscopes, pretending to inspect something and giving her silent request for them both to leave.

Instead, she remained tense as they both continued to stand.

“You don’t have to…” Kara struggled. “If you don’t want us to, we don’t have to stay with you.”

Lena licked her lips, before looking over her shoulder.

“Where else are you going to go?”

Kara nodded, picking Kieran up and letting the girl wrap her arms around her neck.

“Thank you,” she whispered adamantly, before turning to walk away.

Chapter Text

Lena knew fear.

She kept it close and cradled to her chest for far too long to not know it.

It’s part chemical, fear, and part psychogenic. It's also instinctive, and also something you learn. Something you cultivate... and practice hiding beneath other feelings.

Like anger.

You can conquer fear psychologically. If you're willing to look at it for what it is. Few are. Few ever truly gaze into their fear, their pain.  

Fewer still embrace it.

Lena didn’t enjoy fear. But she’d learned to respect it. And when she had finally mastered her fear, she took another look at the world. She went out to learn how to be strong enough to face it. To defend it. To gaze into it and accept it for what it was... without flinching. Because sometimes people influence you not so much by what they mean to you - as by what they allow you to mean to them.

And that was what Kara had made her, tipping the scales of everything in her that was rotten and bad. Things that had been teetering on the edge. Ready to fall into oblivion and beyond.

And she had fallen.

Lena was still falling.

Her eyes darted from station to station, flicking back and forth between various monitors as she tried to ignore the glaring one furthermost from her that was computing and analysing all the scans that she had taken of Kieran.

She still had no words for it all. And maybe the longer she didn’t have words, the easier it would be for the suspended disbelief to continue instead of letting the numbness that tempered her anger finally drop away.

There was a cold distance between family, the kind no one liked to acknowledge. Lena had often wondered when she was little why all the book and movies and stories she heard were about toting the ideal family, where people loved each other so much that it could overcome every argument, every fight. A place and people to always call home, whenever you needed a sympathetic ear or hug. A place that you could lean on.

People that you know, when everything went wrong, would always be there for you.

But the cold reality she had discovered, was that families like that only existed in stories. Far more likely were you to grow apart than stick together. That’s if you were ever really together at all to start with. Fathers could be cold. Mothers could be cruel.

And brothers, who had once been your shelter and place to rest, carved the biggest wounds in your heart and left you untethered in the hate that they had created.

The backstabbing, the plotting, the illness that was blood. As if somehow, being related to someone made you obligated to put up with the worst of their bullshit. As if you weren’t allowed to be guilty and save yourself.

Until the horrifying and liberating truth revealed itself.

You are allowed to live outside of the version of yourself that your family helped create.

You’re allowed to try at least to be free.

Until you aren’t.

“Vera, have you finished scanning the acid?” Lena asked distractedly, sipping at her brutally bitter coffee and lamenting that it didn’t have a hint of whisky.

Or a lot.

“Yes, boss,” Vera’s mechanical voice purred. “It appears to be of alien origin, but genetically altered to be far more potent.”

A projection of the results appeared on a screen, the limited sample Lena had been able to scrape off her melted armour now reverse engineered. Lena rotated in her chair to look at it properly. Watching as it melted through metal and bone and every synthetic resin Lena had created.

“Brilliant,” Lena grimaced, still feeling the wounds it had left behind. “That means I have to find a new material that it can’t melt through. Why is it every time I manage to upgrade in some way, these assholes still stay one step ahead of me?”

A holographic display of Vera whirled and appeared beside her. And despite her robotic-like features, Lena could swear she had a hint of a smirk on her mouth.

“Probably because you’re working alone, and they are not.”

Lena scowled, standing to her feet and abandoning the sludge of coffee as she walked toward another bench with a stack of precarious half-finished projects she was supposed to be working on for the company.

“I’m not alone,” she mumbled, picking up a loose, warped piece of metal, grunting as she remembered how badly the test had gone which had involved the shard.

“I have you.”

There was a long silence, Lena instinctively braced herself.

“And now two wards to worry about.”

Lena didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t need to think about it. Everything that was that particular mess could be thrown into another, separated, section of her mind along with all the dark things she had to process this week that weren’t the immediate and new threat in this city.

“I didn’t create you to give opinions on my personal life,” she spat, throwing the shard down and stalking over to the large, stocked cabinet of weapons now. Opening it, the locks whirring, Lena removed the large, sickly yellow and glowing gun that she had designed knowing she would never get a chance to use.

Feeling the weight of it in her hands though, she tried to forget about the new weights on her shoulders.

“You didn’t want your identity to become known before,” Vera continued, clearly disregarding what Lena had just told her. “Surely you must fear more now that circumstances have changed?”

Lena closed her eyes and tried to calm the panic that picked up in her chest at those words. Maybe she should have told Kara to seek out Alex. Maybe Vera was right. Because even though it had been less than a day, Lena was entirely sure that she didn’t want Kara or the kid to know anything about her nighttime activities. Partly because she didn’t want Alex finding of Kara couldn’t keep her mouth shut.

Something she was extremely good at when it came to Lena but very terrible at when it came to everyone else in her life.

Lena tried not to wince at the nursing hurt she still felt over the entire Supergirl debacle.

But more then that, she didn’t need any judgment or approval or whatever Kara would feel over her role as National City’s vigilante. She didn’t need Kara’s opinion on anything these days.

An image of Kieran flashed in her mind, and Lena’s confused emotions whirled once more.

More then anything, and she didn’t think she would ever be able to admit it out loud, was that she didn’t want Kara to know how much she had changed. And all the things she had done because she couldn’t handle being alone with her thoughts and angry at the world without doing something about it any longer.

A sudden ping sounded out that distracted Lena from her thoughts, she looked the weapon away once more and turned back to where Kieran’s results had finally come through. Watching over them all, her stomach dropped slightly, and she grimaced.

Everything that she had confirmed that Kieran had the same powers and abilities of Kara. And even though her physiology didn’t indicate anything of her human origin, the proof of the maternity test couldn’t be denied.

“How is it possible?” Lena asked quietly, herself more than Vera. “For her to be mine and Kara’s?”

Vera’s projection hovered next to her, shrugging and making Lena want to create her a physical form so that she could kick her ass.

“Probability would indicate a 95% chance that something in the final round of altered treatment you used with Ms Danvers caused it,” Vera explained. “Experimenting with Coluan genetic anomalies to inspire a genetic response or defence mechanism in Ms Danvers DNA may not have been quite as fruitless as previously anticipated. Instead, it is possible that you gave her a subset of telepathic abilities somewhat common in the Coluan species.”

Lena scoffed at that.

“We would have known if she could read minds, Vera.”

At least Lena hoped so unless that had been yet another thing that Kara had lied to her about.

And the implications of that ability made Lena want to wear a tinfoil hat.

“Not if the abilities manifested differently, given her basic Kryptonian DNA,” Vera continued, almost sounding amused by Lena’s moodiness. “Instead of being able to read the thoughts of others, her mind stretched out at its fringes for a different connection.”

Lena sighed, running the science in her mind and coming to the same conclusion. Despite the numerous tests that she had conducted on Kara over a year, there was still so much she had yet to understand about her body’s functions. Even though they were remarkably human in many ways, there were so many ways that they weren’t. Part of the reason that Lena had grown more and more obsessed with returning Kara’s powers to her was that she knew Kara’s body still had to potential to have them. Her bones were still denser, her chromosomal structure was still different, and her the frontal lobe of her brain was still larger.

So it definitely would be beyond the realm of possibility that Kara had been affected by her tests, and a part of her delighted that she had been.

Though she definitely hadn’t intended the effect to be this. 

“Unable to control it’s passive intents, in times of emotional vulnerability, it is possible that Ms Danvers copied your genetic blueprint and in turn combined it with her own to form a foetus. Given that emotional vulnerability usually occurs during interco-“

Lena cut her off with a hand wave.

“I get it, Vera,” she grunted, feeling cheated even though this wasn’t either her or Kara’s fault and she doubted was Kara’s intention. “We had sex, and somehow, she passively and accidentally created a baby.”

Lena sat down in her chair and let out a groan. Resting her head in her hands, she tried to compute it all in a way she could understand.

”And to think,” she mumbled sarcastically. “In my wildest dreams, I never imagined myself being a father.”

“You are not a father,” Vera’s voice whirled, sounding all too chipper and innocent for Lena’s taste. “You were assigned female at birth, and you are cisgender, the term ‘father’ doesn’t typically apply to you. However, there have been-“

Lena turned with a scowl and threw a wrench in Vera’s direction. It passed through the hologram and landed on the floor with a loud clatter, and for the fiftieth time this week, Lena wondered if she shouldn’t just disassemble the AI and burn her parts.

“Yes, Vera,” she drawled bitterly. “I understand… It was a joke about lesbians firing blanks, but I can see it went over your head… as usual.”

Vera virtually tilted her head.

“Congratulations on your bouncing baby child. You are now a parent.”

Lena stared at the hologram blankly before letting out a sharp bark of laughter. Shaking her head, Lena wondered at how sad her life had become where she had to build herself a friend to feel less lonely.

But still, her limited mirth died when she swivelled the chair around to look at the scans of Kieran once more.

“No… a parent is exactly what I’m not,” Lena answered despondently. “She doesn’t even know me, or like me for that matter… and I haven’t been a part of her life. It’s a title you earn, despite what some people might think.”

Lena wasn’t stupid. She could see the suspicion in the child’s gaze as she watched Lena, constantly assessing in a way that was so very un-childlike and so very Lena-like. The intelligence was clear, but Lena would look at her, and she didn’t feel in her heart the thing that all parents professed at having. That instant bond or connection, the need to nurture or protect. Instead, she just looked at Kieran and felt unsure. This was an entire person that she had technically helped create, and she didn’t know what she was supposed to think beyond confusion and anger that was all too undeserving.

And it wasn’t just because Kara had kept this from her for so long, for God knows what reason. But because Lena could already feel the sense of panic and foreboding in her heart that this entire thing was going to end terribly.

Lena was not cut out to be a parent. She couldn’t even look after herself most days, let alone a child. She didn’t know what Kara had been thinking to keep the child’s existence from her, but at the same time, she was angry that she had ever come back and told her at all.

Nobody deserved a forced connection to Lena Luthor.

“You do not want to earn it?”

Lena gritted her teeth at Vera’s words.

“I don’t fucking know what I want!” She shouted, feeling the edge of her eyes burn with tears she hadn’t shed in many years. “All I know is that all of this is adding another pile of problems onto an already unclimbable pile.”

Looking back over at the acid, and the tests Vera was running on autopilot to find a counteracting agent, Lena let out another exhausted breath.

Running her hand down her face, and finding too many faint lines, Lena pinched the bridge of her nose.

“That shitstorm last night… I should be focusing on that,” she muttered bitterly. “Instead I now have to worry about Kara and a kid, and whatever the hell is going on with both of them, that has Kara too terrified to tell me.”

And who knew what that was all about. All Lena could tell, despite a hesitation to ask, was that she had never seen Kara as scared or as desperate before. Even though she was putting on a brave front, maybe for Kieran’s benefit or even Lena’s, she was running from something terrible enough to reenter Lena’s life no doubt knowing how Lena’s reaction would be.

And Lena didn’t have to guess at the chances of the things Kara was scared of, the monsters in the dark, following her.

“You did not tell her you were Outlier.”

Lena rolled her eyes at Vera’s semi accusation.

“Because it’s redundant information,” she muttered.

“Not telling your partner you are a vigilante is redundant information?”

Lena felt that lance go straight through her heart. Banging her fists so hard against the table, all the objects on it rattled into the air, Lena stood to her feet and turned to Vera with fury.

“She is not my partner!”

The words rang out, along with all of Lena’s anger and she felt herself slightly deflate with her exhaustion and under Vera’s blank gaze.

“At most she’s… I…”

Lena struggled for words and let out another sigh.

“I have no fucking clue what she is,” she spat. “But it’s not like we’re together. Leaving the morning after and not appearing until nearly four years later with a kid was enough to prove that.”

And Lena could still remember that morning. Even though a part of her heart had known that Kara wouldn’t be there when she woke up, the emptiness beside her had just mirrored the hollowness of her heart.

“Can we please stop talking about it?” She sounded out. “The fact that the only person I can speak honestly about all this stuff is an AI I created is depressing enough.”

At least Vera didn’t sigh when Lena made efforts to avoid things.

Another ding sounded out, Lena walked towards the acid type and watched as new results bounced up.

“The new polymer shows a 72.666% probability of withstanding the acid type,” Vera sounded as Lena read them. “And the replacement wings for your glider have finished diagnostics. Coated in the synthetic resin, it should also be able to withstand all acid attacks.”

That at least made Lena smile. She had been missing her wings ever since they had been stolen from her, and it would be nice to reclaim some of her new identity under the onslaught of all the other changes that had entered her life.

“Good,” she said happily. “Now if we could only figure out a way for all the bad guys to leave National City.”

She walked toward the new glider, smiling at the dark colour and wondered vainly if she should also add the symbol that the city had come to associate with Outlier to make more of a statement then she already was.

“If they did that, they would likely settle in other locations.”

Lena paused, before turning to give Vera deadpan stare, the hologram just looking at her blankly and emotionlessly.

“At this point, I honestly have no idea if you’re fucking with me or not anymore… “ Lena finally replied, before walking back over to her chair and picking up her jacket. “Well, there’s only one thing for it. If anyone is going to have a clue in this city about who our mystery man was from last night or who the hell he’s working for, then it’ll be Dain.”

The smarmy little weasel who had somehow conveniently forgotten to mention to exact buyers at last nights little meeting.

“I would not recommend a venture tonight, boss,” Vera cautioned as Lena pulled on her leather jacket. “If you wish your activities to remain secret from Ms Danvers and the child, there is a 45% chance that they will discover your alter ego within the week. It increases to an 87% probability if they continue to stay with you for two.”

Lena scoffed, rolling her eyes and waved away the numbers.

“Then I’ll just have to be extra sneaky, won’t I?”

It wasn’t usual for Lena to feel reluctant about going home. Once upon a time, maybe. When she would sleep at her desk and slave away over new ideas with enthusiasm and a deep, driven desire to see her company make a name in the world that was no longer stained by Lex. Back then, her apartment had felt cold and unloved, and definitely not lived in. To a casual observer, if you took away the stringent security, one could have easily mistaken it for a rental. A weekender for people to stay in and then leave, never really leaving a mark.

Now, not that it was any more loved, it was lived in. Stocked with everything that Lena had left that made her who she was. Books and old paintings that she couldn’t bear the be parted from. The clothes rotated now in her closet, everything that she used to wear that was ‘respectable’ now firmly in the back and all her former and current grunge glory from her teenage years, in the front. If Lena’s apartment could talk, it would wonder at the total 180 in her outward personality, turning back to the way Lena had wanted to present herself to the world when she was a bitter, angry and resentful teenager.

And now a bitter, angry and resentful adult.

Because now, Lena counted down the seconds to when she could return to her apartment. As if she was crawling her way into a decorated, and armed to the teeth, cave. A hole for her to return to where she required zero human contact, and she could go days without leaving or speaking if she wanted to.

But now, the place would no longer be her haven. Not so long as she had invited a woman that she wasn’t sure she didn’t at least partially hate, and a kid she was terrifyingly a parent of and she had to pretend that she wasn’t spending her nights beating criminals to a pulp.

Triple checking the see that her new glider wings were successfully folded and hidden in her backpack, Lena unlocked her heavy metal door and prayed that Kara and Kieran were with Alex at the DEO, or really anywhere, so she could pretend for at least five minutes that everything was back to the way it used to be.

No such luck. The second she opened the doors, voices inside died, and Lena tried not the scowl at the sight of Alex in her apartment, sitting at the kitchen counter while Kara busied herself in the kitchen making something. They both looked up at the sight of her, unlike Kieran, who was sitting on the couch with a large book in her lap.

Lena’s eyes drifted over Alex, trying not to take in the other woman’s exhausted expression, the dark bags under her eyes or that she looked like she hadn’t been eating and feel any sympathy. Logically, she knew that Alex was trying to do her best by Lena by continually turning up and trying to pry Lena open like a jar to see if she was alright for all these years, but the more she had tried, the more Lena had withdrawn. She didn’t want to speak to anyone, or commiserate with anyone or grieve with anyone over the fact that Kara had so abruptly exited all their lives and left no contact.

Lena didn’t want to have friends anymore, or so-called found family, all of whom she had met in the first place through Kara. She didn’t want to pretend or try to move on healthily. She didn’t want to be analysed and comforted by Alex or J’onn or Nia or Brainy or James or Kelly (who she had a sneaking suspicion would try to convince her to seek out therapy).

Lena didn’t want to pretend anymore that she was someone she wasn’t.

So when they phoned, she changed her number. And when they emailed, she blocked them. And when Brainy found five hundred ways to get around those measures, she threw her phone and a computer off her balcony, drunkenly hoping that he got the message somehow.

And when Alex continuingly, and annoying, kept turning up at her office like clockwork every month, she refused to see her.

And now she was here, in Lena’s apartment, while Kara cooked for her. The biggest surprise in this scenario though was the fact that Kara’s food looked edible.

“Well,” Lena frowned. “This is a fuller house then I am used to.”

Alex looked at her with her tired eyes, though Lena felt even more bitter at the light of newfound happiness in them no doubt brought by the return of Kara. Her face grew wary, her eyes darting back to Kara, who was watching them both with a nervous expression, and when Alex looked back at Lena, her posture turned defensive.

“Lena.”

Lena tried not to roll her eyes or scoff at the blunt voice as if Alex hadn’t been the one chasing her for conversation for the past few years. And the gall of Alex being protective over Kara, as if Lena had any intention of harming her.

Lena gave Alex a mocking bow.

“Alex,” she drawled with a smirk, the corner of her eyes catching Kara’s silent concerned look. “So delighted to see you again.”

Walking past Alex and around the counter, because she’d be damned before she felt uncomfortable in her own home even with all these invaders. Brushing past Kara, deliberately close enough that the other woman shivered and Alex’s eyes narrowed. Lena tried not to smirk as she opened her fridge and reached for a beer. Her brow furrowed at the sight of even more vegetables, trying to remember the last time she could recall Kara even eating a carrot.

Apparently, yet another thing that had changed.

“If I recall,” Alex sounded out, annoyingly judgemental as Lena popped the cap and took a long drink. “The last conversation we had you told me that you never wanted to see me again.”

Lena rolled her eyes, turning back to face Alex. Kara still cutting up food, clearly trying not to eye Lena with concern as she took another sip.

“Well, that never stopped you before,” Lena replied dryly as she leant back on the bench. “Besides, I’d have a bit to drink that day. A tough one at the office.”

Lena noticed the way that Kara’s shoulders stiffened at the word ‘drink’ and Lena frowned. Guessing that in the brief time Kara had been back, she no doubt had concerns over Lena’s coping mechanisms. Not that it was any of her business, and had rightly thus far not said anything about it.

Alex, on the other hand (which Lena found highly hypocritical), eyed the beer Lena was holding with far too much significance to be passing.

“You mean holed up in R and D?” She replied testily.

Lena felt a flare of annoyance. Alex’s words, a barb on well known and gossiped fact in the media of Lena’s sharp retreat into L-Corp’s bowels, making her scowl.

“Some of us have work that doesn’t involve making sure the local Anasazi has paid their taxes,” she spat back viciously.

Alex’s face turned thunderous, and Lena felt darkly happy that she had annoyed her. The tension in the room rose and turned electric, and Lena half-hoped that the other woman finally broke her annoying, caring, facade of the past few years and did something stupid like throwing a punch.

But the whole bubble burst when Kara slammed her knife down on the bench and gave both of them annoyed looks.

“Can you two please not fight?” She hissed, nodding deliberately in Kieran’s direction. The girl was now finally looking up from her book to stare at them all.

Lena tried not to frown under the intensity of it, a shiver rolling down her spine at the entirely too mature edge in the girl’s eyes.

Alex looked guilty, sinking slightly back into her stool.

“I’m sorry.”

Lena frowned, first at the girl and then at Alex. Wondering, despite herself, how the other woman was handling the appearance of Kara and a niece and whether she was reeling internally the same way that Lena was.

Of course, Alex had always wanted kids and was good with them in a way that Lena would never understand. The only child she had spent any amount of time with one on one was Ruby, and even then she had been a teenager, and Lena was far more focused on making sure that Sam didn’t go haywire and hurt the girl as Reign.

Lena tried to remember the last time she had spoken the Sam.

Taking another drink, finishing the bottle, she eyed Kieran speculatively.

“I’m not,” she finally replied, because she saw no point in lying even if she could acknowledge her pettiness.

Kieran’s full attention to her now, her head tilting.

“Why is Yeyu making me call her Aunt when I can call you Lena?”

Lena’s eyebrow arched and couldn’t help feel amused, turning to look questioningly at Kara herself and wondering at the answer. The blonde was frowning though, the crease between her eyebrows deepening.

“Because I told you so.”

Lena scoffed, folding her arms. And apparently, Kieran felt the same way as she did, letting out a grumble.

“It was a reasonable question.”

Lena tried not to grin, but she couldn’t stop it from growing on her face. Shooting an amused look at Kieran, taking in her grumpy expression, Lena looked back at Kara.

“She’s got you there, Kara.”

Kara turned a frustrated look to her then, her eyes flashing. Lena’s heart, without warning, lurched at the expression and she couldn’t even find the strength within her to curse at herself. Something about it being the most honest, and easily unguarded, expression that Kara had given her since she had arrived made Lena want to melt slightly at the knees.

Lena wondered if she had become so starved of affection that one annoyed glance could make her feel that way, but chalked it up to Kara’s annoying habit of making Lena feel far too overly invested in Kara’s happiness then she wanted to be.

“Since when do you speak Kryptonian?”

Lena blinked, having almost forgotten that Alex was there. Turning to look at her, she shrugged.

“Why is everyone shocked by this?” She questioned. “I already spoke seven languages; this is just the eighth.”

Before either of the two adults could reply, Kieran’s voice sounded out from the couch.

“You speak seven languages? Which ones?”

Lena looked over at her, feeling something again in her heart at the interest in the girl’s voice. The raw enthusiasm that sparked memories of another little girl who had been eager to learn, so many years ago.

And illogically, Lena suddenly felt a yearning in her chest.

“English, of course,” she replied. “French, Spanish, Mandarin, Russian, Portuguese and Indonesian.”

Kieran’s eyes lit up at that.

“Teach me.”

It was blunt in its delivery, and more of a commandment than a question, but it made Lena smile and feel lighter then she had in a long time. Giving the girl a speculative look, she was half a second away from agreeing before Kara cut off the thought with an indignant expression.

“Kieran!”

The girl looked disgruntled, but the keenness in her eyes didn’t dim.

“Please,” she added on, half reluctantly.

Lena stared at her for a few seconds, making up her mind, before she pushed past Kara and walked toward the far wall where her floor to ceiling bookshelf made up the entirety of it. Hearing Kara apologises behind her; she ignored it in favour of searching the shelves intently with her eyes before she pulled out an old, leather-bound, book. Turning back to Kieran, who was still watching her with those unnervingly intent eyes, Lena held it out for her to take.

“Here Le Comte de Monte-Cristo,” Lena said, the mix of French and Kryptonian rolling together. “Start reading this.”

The girl took the book eagerly, staring down at the cover before Kara strode towards them and gave Lena an irritated look.

“Lena, you can’t give her that to read!”

Lena eyed her with annoyance; the moment was broken when Kieran’s eyes became guarded once more.

“Why not?” Lena replied with irritation. “It’s a good book. Interesting plot… a classic.”

Kara scowled, shaking her head firmly.

“No.”

Lena supposed it might have something to do with the book’s dark themes, revenge being primary, and Kara perhaps considering it to be too heavy for a girl to read. Though Lena had the feeling that Kieran would be decidedly unbothered by that in favour of it just being good literature, the same way that Lena had been when she was a child.

Though, considering that… maybe it wasn’t the best choice.

Conceding that Kara was in fact, Kieran’s mother, Lena, reached back to the shelf for another book and handed it to Kieran too.

“Fine,” she said blandly, hoping that this choice would satisfy Kara for its age appropriateness. “Here, this instead.”

Kieran’s fingers brushed over the inscribed title.

"Voyage au Centre de la Terre… what does it mean?” She asked, looking up at Lena.

“Journey to the Centre of the Earth,” Lena replied. “Jules Verne.”

The girl looked back down at the book, considering. Lena found herself feeling slightly nervous now, though she couldn’t for the life of herself understand why.

But then, Kieran looked back up at her with softer eyes.

“Thank you… Lena.”

Lena blinked, a soft smile growing in reply.

“You’re welcome.”

They watched each other for a few seconds, Lena drawn into the odd familiarity of Kieran’s face before Alex let out a cough from the other side of the room. Breaking into Lena’s contemplation as she realised that Kara had also been standing beside her, watching her and Kieran interact silently and not saying a word herself.

“I see you’ve acclimatised to the shock of discovering you’re a parent,” Alex spoke, a knowing look in her eyes.

Lena blinked, feeling unbalanced. Unable to do anything else, she looked at Kara. Seeing nothing but softness in her eyes which did little to ebb the stress thundering now through Lena’s entire body.

“I’m… it’s….”

Her words left her, and all she could do was stare at Kara. Not knowing what to say when the weight of everything neither of them was saying sat above them, threatening to be unleashed. Lena wondered if people were only allotted a certain amount of emotion, or heartbreak when it came to another person. If there was a point where it all just reached a limit where you couldn’t be wounded any more, then you already were. If there was a point where that someone else couldn’t hurt you past.

She’d yet to reach it with Kara.

The other woman and whatever she was feeling, seemed to settle slightly as she looked away and back at her sister.

“Alex,” she said warningly, almost begging for the other woman to back off with her words.

Alex seemed to realise she might have stepped a toe too far, letting out a tired breath and giving Lena a softer look.

“You can stay with me if you want to, Kara,” Alex quieted. “Both of you.”

Lena knew that even though the words were to Kieran and Kara, the meaning was for her what Alex was really saying lingering in the air.

You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.

Lena couldn’t help but feel slightly grateful for that, even though the unspoken offer for support still managed to rub her the wrong way.

Kara though looked back at Lena and searched for something in her face for a long minute before she shook her head in reply.

“No,” she answered. “Thank you, but no.”

Their eyes locked, and Lena’s breath caught in her throat. Time stopping between them and making everything but Lena’s pounding heart stop.

There was so much she wanted to say, so much pain.

But there was that horrible, all-encompassing desire and wish to pull Kara in tight and never let her go.

The moment was broken by Alex once more.

“We have a lot more to talk about.”

Lena blinked, the world rushing back to her as she remembered where she was. Kieran was staring up at them both with discerning eyes, Alex’s mimicking her niece’s and Kara, liar though she was, still occupying her home.

And Alex’s words lingered with another meaning once more directed at Lena.

Telling her to fuck off.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” Lena grumbled, feeling annoyed as she avoided Kieran’s gaze and pushed past Kara. “I’ll go hide in my office then, shall I? There are mugs in the cupboard if you want to have tea and scones.”

Kara gave her an apologetic look, but she seemed grateful all the same. Lena was left to wonder who exactly owned this apartment, which now had more people in it in one day than had been in it for years. All but stomping away and down the hall, Lena opened the door to her office and was ready to slam it behind her petulantly and proceed to get drunk. Then she could wait out the next hangover until she could sneak out while Kieran and Kara were asleep. But before she could, a hard thud blocked her, and she looked back to see a small but iron arm holding the door open.

Lena frowned down at the ground not full of a single good mood, even for the girl.

“What do you want?” She questioned harshly with a raised eyebrow.

Kieran held up the copy of the book Lena had given her.

“To read,” she answered in Kryptonian. "This way, I can ask you questions.”

Lena’s frown deepened into a scowl, and she leaned against the doorframe to stop Kieran from pushing through and past her. Why on earth the girl would want to ask her anything bemused her as much as it irritated her. She supposed, if it were her at that age she would want to know more about this mysterious mother that she’d only ever heard glorified stories about. But Lena also recalled that she had been considerably shyer and far less hardened by the world. The confidence that radiated off the girl, the sheer will to get what she wanted reminded her far more eerily of Lex than herself.

“I don’t like talking,” Lena grumbled, her thoughts troubled.

Kieran shrugged.

“I don’t like it either.”

Lena wavered at that, a part of her wanting to close the door on the girl’s face and retreat into a self pondering hole, the way she was most comfortable these days. But her heart had already softened towards Kara and Kieran had managed to wedge herself inwards too.

Stepping back, she opened the door to allow Kieran entry.

“Fine,” she muttered, closing the door behind the girl after she stepped inside.

Pointing to a chair in the corner of the room, she walked towards her desk and the tumbler of alcohol she kept there.

“Sit there.”

Kieran did as ordered, sitting on the leather chaise and letting her legs swing loose in the air. Lena watched as she poured a drink, the old book cracking open and held far too large in Kieran’s lap. The girl didn’t speak much, turning pages quietly as Lena settled herself in her office chair and pulled out the schematics on an L-Corp project she had been avoiding.

Quickly getting drawn into the plans, Lena scribbled away at the corners making notes for changes and typed them up on her computer to send to Troy. The man would undoubtedly be delighted that she had something productive to contribute to his day. Looking up from her work, her eyes slid over to Kieran in the corner who was steadily chewing through the book in her lap, her lips moving silently as if she were sounding out the unfamiliar words in her head to understand. Lena watched her, thoughts muddling in her head along with everything else that had happened that day.

The girl was smart, far too intelligent even for a Luthor. Something had happened to her to contribute to it. Lena wondered if had something to do with the unique nature of her conception and if that had allowed for an extreme increase in intelligence. It wasn’t something that Lena could easily contend with, along with the ginormous pile of problems that seemed to follow Kara whenever she appeared in her life.

Lena wondered if she should say something now. Struggle through to make a connection with Kieran when she had her alone and out from under Kara’s eye. Though knowing Kara, she had undoubtedly had a hand in orchestrating their current one on one situation.

She didn’t even know what to say, having no desire to tread on the topics that weren’t being talked about yet.

Struggling, she noticed the slight pull of Kieran’s eyes as she looked up from the page when she turned it, flickering towards the old hand-carved chess board in the corner of the room. Lena followed the gaze too, staring at the board and trying not to get overwhelmed with the memory of her first night at the Luthor’s when she was a child. And the way Lex had invited her to play a game.

Standing to her feet, she walked towards the board and fiddles with a piece. Looking up at Kieran, who was pretending not to watch her, she smiled. 

“Do you want to play a game?”

Kieran seemed torn, but eventually, she nodded slightly and placed her book to the side. Lena picked up the board gently, careful not to let the pieces fall, and carried it over to her desk. Placing it in the centre, Kieran walked towards her and jumped up on the chair opposite, scooting forward in a way that made Lena hold back another grin.

“Do you know the rules?” Lena asked, sitting down herself.

Kieran shook her head.

“No.”

Lena hummed in reply, before making the first move and shifting a pawn.

“You’ll learn.”

Lena rubbed her chin, frowning as she pondered her next move. For someone who had supposedly never played chess before, Kieran had an excellent understanding of the rules and strategies. Eyeing the girl suspiciously, she shifted her remaining rook.

“You know, my brother taught me this game when I was only a little older than you,” Lena sounded out, her lips pinching when Kieran made her returning move within a few seconds. “I beat him easily, of course. He’s dead now though.”

Lena could have kicked herself, wondering why on earth that last statement had slipped out even though it was to be expected. She had only buried the man yesterday, though that seemed lifetimes ago already.

“Sorry,” she winced, feeling awkward. “I’m not sure how to talk to you.”

Kieran shook her head.

“It’s ok. I don’t mind,” she said softly in response.

Lena let out a breath, moving another piece.

“I suppose I should ask you normal, childlike things,” she answered, staring at the board. “But you don’t strike me as the type to want to tell me your favourite colour.”

There was a brief pause.

“It’s green.”

Lena blinked in surprise, feeling softened.

“Mine’s blue,” she replied.

Seeming encouraged by her words, Kieran shifted another piece and asked the next question herself.

“What’s your favourite book?”

Lena thought about it for a second.

“I don’t have one. I like too many.”

Kieran nodded, apparently satisfied with the answer as a small grin lit up her face.

“I’ve read the other book you gave me before,” she said partially guilty, partially enthused. “In English. Yeyu doesn’t know, but I’ve read it.”

Lena wondered if she should even feel surprised anymore when it came to Kieran. Still, she sat back in her chair and took a long sip of her drink.

“Tell me, how does a kid that’s been travelling the world all their life manage to read so much?”

Kieran grinned fiercely, a glint in her eye as she shifted a piece.

“I’m clever.”

Lena was about to reply when the words choked in her throat. Looking down at the board, she realised that Kieran had managed to outmanoeuvre her and lock her in checkmate. Shocked, she almost jumped when Kieran giggled. A beautiful sound that made Lena look up into her face, which finally looked childlike and full of glee.

“Yes,” Lena replied softly. “Yes, you are.”

Kieran’s grin widened, pushing back Lena’s white pieces to her side of the table to be rearranged on the board.

“I like it,” she said happily. “Can we play again?”

Lena nodded, picking up her queen and rolling it in her fingers.

“Of course we can,” she replied, leaning forward with a grin. “I want to figure out how you beat me.”

Another three games later, in which Kieran managed to slaughter her again and again, Lena was slowly feeling wobbly on irritation, annoyance and her fourth glass of whisky.

“Why do you have so many scars?”

The question was like a sharp lance into Lena’s drunken thoughts, sobering her almost instantly. Looking at Kieran, the seriousness in her face, Lena’s first instinct was to lie. But an unexpected feeling grew in her heart, patterns of dismissal in the eyes of her parents, made her change her mind. Realising that the observant girl must have noticed the wounds and silvery scars lining her body last night, she instead fell back on deflection.

Shifting a piece, she answered slowly and deliberately.

“Because I’ve been in a lot of fights over the years,” she answered.

Kieran made her move.

“Yeyu has been in fights before,” she insisted, probing still. “She told me. But she doesn’t have as many scars as you.”

Lena clucked her tongue.

“Ah, but I’m human,” she answered. “Your Yeyu is Kryptonian. She has superpowers, just like you.”

Kieran looked saddened.

“Not anymore…” She whispered, making Lena wonder just how much Kara had told the girl about the circumstances surrounding her loss of powers. And she felt a swell of sorrow for the girl, who had undoubtedly felt alone experiencing things that her mother could explain but no longer share with her.

Lena swallowed the thoughts away.

“What’s your favourite power?” She asked instead of commenting.

Kieran shifted nervously.

“I like it when I can hear things…” She admitted almost guiltily, avoiding Lena’s gaze. “Things I’m not supposed to. It doesn’t happen all the time, but sometimes I can hear conversations from ages away. Sometimes I listen to them for hours instead of going to sleep. Is that bad?”

Lena was surprised at the need of reassurance from the girl, giving the demeanour she had projected towards her the entire day.

She shook her head in response, smiling gently.

“No, that’s not a bad thing,” Lena answered. “Curiosity is human, even if it is an invasion of privacy. I would have done the same if I was your age.”

That much was indeed true, but Lena suddenly felt like laughing when she remembered many of the things she did now as Outlier that toed moral lines.

“In fact, I still do the same thing now,” she admitted.

Kieran seemed confused and frowned.

“But you don’t have powers…”

Lena pursed her lips, eyes growing dark as she moved another piece.

“Not all powers come from your blood, Keiran,” she husked, thoughts turning around the things she had done over the years in the dark of the night. The Harun-El she had engineered alongside the deaths on her conscience.

And the one death she would never, ever, feel sorry for. No matter how gruesome it had been.

Kieran seemed to sense that the topic had come to a close, her next words slipping out vulnerable.

“I have another name, you know.”

Lena’s thoughts drew out of the shadows, returning once more to the girl.

“You do?”

Kieran nodded.

“Sier Kara-El. But Yeyu says it’s my secret name. I’m not supposed to tell people.”

Lena thought the name over, sounding it out in her mind and marvelled slightly at the deep connection that Kara still felt to her home planet. No doubt that she wanted to continue the connection with her children. Lena wondered briefly at the stories of Krypton Kieran had been told, and felt a desire to hear them herself. The idea of absorbing as much of the history… Kara’s history, with the other woman and now the daughter that connected them was….

Lena shoved it down.

“You told me,” she replied, unable to stop herself from feeling touched.

Kieran flushed slightly.

“I like you,” she admitted.

The knowledge made Lena happy, even though she knew it also made her weak.

“You didn’t this morning.”

Kieran smiled, making her final move and locking Lena in checkmate.

“I didn’t beat you at chess this morning.”

Nearly an hour into their tenth game, Lena found herself feeling far lighter then she had in a long time. The music she had turned on low in the background still filtered its way through the room and Lena smiled at the girl who was staring at the board with deep intensity.

“You ready to concede?” She asked with a tease, taking in her daughter’s pinched expression.

Kieran shook her head.

“No.”

Lena bit back a laugh, having already determined that there was no possible way for the kid to win, and stood up to make her way over to her liquor stand for another refill. Pouring herself a few more fingers of whisky, she took a long appreciative sip before turning back around.

“What was I talking about before?” She asked, slightly hazy.

“You said the importance of a good blue suit can never be overstated,” Kieran replied.

Lena nodded, taking another long sip before moving to stand behind Kieran.

“Quite right,” she replied, remembering her own words. “A blue suit is the most versatile of accoutrements. More important is the person who fits it for you.”

Kieran watched her as she took another sip, Lena nodding to back up her words.

“Once you find a good tailor, you must never give their name away not even under the threat of bodily harm,” she advised, before looking over the board. “Now whose turn was it?”

“Mine.”

Lena looked down at the board critically, an eyebrow arching as she realised that Kieran had moved one of her pieces when she wasn’t looking and was now in prime position to win. Lena struggled not to laugh, even though a swell of pride grew in her chest and the girl’s acumen, intelligence and the edge of ruthlessness she had just displayed.

“Uh huh,” was all she said, pursing her lips and walking back to her side of the desk so she could retake her seat. Holding Kieran’s gaze, the girl staring at her with a blank expression without a hint of falsehood, Lena arched an eyebrow as she drained the final vestiges of her drink.

“You know why I like playing chess, Kieran?” She asked as she lowered the glass.

“Why?”

Lena leaned back casually.

“Because it’s a game that is quite incapable of lying,” she replied. “You can be smart, cunning, have strategy… but it never ever lies.”

Kieran’s face didn’t so much as twitch.

“Ok.”

They continued to stare at each other, before Lena took a good long and dramatic look back at the board, her eyes sliding up to Kieran’s.

“So, Kieran,” she said lightly, diving for the truth. “Now that you know why I love chess so much, do you have anything you want to tell me?”

The girl nodded instantly.

“Yes, I do.”

“What is it?” Lena gestured for the girl to continue.

A large smirk grew on the child’s face at that, and she reached across the board the shift her piece.

“Checkmate.”

Lena let out a bark, shaking her head in merriment as Kieran’s grin grew.

“You little shit,” Lena muttered, rearranging the pieces for another game, making Kieran laugh.

Lena wondered if it was the alcohol, but she delighted at the sound.

Chapter Text

Lena hovered through the city, crouching low against her glider as flew. Dark and quiet against the sky, Lena knew that the people looking out the windows as she flew past wouldn’t be able to see her.

One of the differences between how she served this city as Outlier and Kara had as Supergirl was that Supergirl wanted to be seen. Always. Seen fighting, seen loud, seeing winning and being a hero. With a flashy and ostentatious red cape, a picture splashed on the front page every other day; there was little chance for anyone to forget who National City’s patron hero was.

Lena frowned at the edge of bitterness and shunted it aside. She wasn’t jealous of the adoration Supergirl had received, but she didn’t want to open up the can of worms that was Kara right now. Not when she had snuck out in the early hours of the morning once she was sure Kieran and Kara were asleep in her bed, donning her repaired black suit and helmet, pushing all of it out of her mind while she comforted back into who she was.

What she was.

“Boss, initial thermal scans indicated that the suspect is in his apartment.”

Lena smiled, grimly at Vera’s voice. Slowing her flight until she was hovering underneath Dain’s apartment window, testing the lock and cutting through it with a quick, sharp burst of lasered heat, Lena unlocked the mag clamps on her boots, opening the window quietly and slipped inside. With a press of a button, she sent her glider on its way. Flying above the cityscape and out of sight until she called for it back.

She had entered in the kitchen and was immediately grateful for the air filters of her helmet. Dirty dishes stacked up, an overflowing bin and a half rotten take away food littering the counters. Out of the corner of her eye, she swore she saw a rat running on top of a cupboard. Crouching low, he ears picked up on the sound of quick clattering and rushed feet. And a man, muttering to himself. Lena darted forward, low to the ground until she slipped into the living room. Hiding in the dark shadows, she narrowed at the sight of the thin man rushing around, seemingly frantic and picking up random objects to shove in a bag.

Frowning, she rose to her feet silently, watching him quietly for a few seconds before speaking.

“Leaving, are we, Dain?” She questioned, partially happy when her sensors picked up on his rapid heartbeat and sharp fear when he whirled to face her. “Why the sudden rush?”

The man had always existed in a state of nervousness when it came to Outlier, though Lena was happy enough with the fear she experienced at the hands of criminals. It was always better to be feared and respected, to have people worried about just how far she would go to get what she wanted, then for her moral lines to be tested.

But, surprisingly, the man didn’t even quake. Turning back to his bag and continuing to pack random objects.

“I’m getting the fuck out of this city!” He spat, reaching for a stapler.

Lena frowned, striding forward and grabbing his elbow, twisting it behind him until he let out a cry.

“And why would that be?” She muttered in his ear.

He squirmed, but another inch of twisting had him gasping a reply.

“You should know!” He shouted. “Fucking blood bath you caused last night at the docks. Killing all those people.”

Lena snarled, whirling him around to stare down at the weedy man through her glowing red visor.

“You and I both know I wasn’t the one that caused that,” she replied, still holding his wrist tight as she looked over his bag.

“And your newfound desire for a better life had absolutely nothing to do with the death of a few of your fellows,” she continued darkly, noticing his widening pupils and the beads of sweat on his forehead. “You and I both know you’ve stuck it through worse times before with the Reds. I think you know far more than you’re letting on… like who exactly where the buyers at last night's little soiree.”

The man gulped but shook his head.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I swear to God-”

Before he could finish, Lena rushed him backwards until he was pinned against the wall, grabbing his throat, she squeezed and lifted him off the ground until he was kicking his legs and standing on his toes.

“SWEAR TO ME!” She shouted with fury.

The man’s face whitened in fear, his nails prying at her armoured fingers.

“Let me put this another way,” she growled, ignoring his struggling. “You’re going to tell me who they are and where they came from. Or I’ll start pulling off your fingernails. I don’t kill as a rule, but I’m not above torturing rats that lead me into a trap.”

Letting him drop, but still pinned, Dain took in a sharp gasp of air.

“You don’t understand,” he coughed, terror still lacing his voice. “These guys… they’ll kill me.”

Lena filed that away for later analysis but pressed her interrogation forward.

“Well, you better hope they do it quickly,” she hissed. “Because you’re going to walk away from me unable to walk or breathe without sounded like you’ve climbed a mountain.”

Plucking a knife from her belt, she raised it next to his cheek. Slowly inching it closer until she was ready to run a razor sharp line down his thin skin.

The man’s eyes blew open.

“Ok!” He shouted desperately. “Ok, I’ll tell you what I know… but only if you promise to get me the hell out of here alive.”

Lena let the knife drop.

“What do you know?”

Dain licked his cracked lips, his eyes darting all over the room.

“These people… they’re major, and I mean major,” he whispered, his fear increasing. “We were desperate. We needed a buyer for those guns, and with you hanging around like a bad smell, we didn’t have any options left.”

Lena supposed she should be happy, but the words were making her worried. A curdle of ominous feeling growing in her stomach.

“They approached me,” Dain whispered. “A package in my P.O box. I don’t know how they found out about me… I’m the best fucking hacker around, and you know I scrubbed myself from the internet.”

Lena scoffed.

“Don’t get too cocky, Dain. I found you after all,” she muttered, before shaking him slightly. “And get to the fucking point already.”

He nodded and gulped.

“They knew that one of the guy's brothers worked in a factory that manufactured alien weapons,” Dain stuttered. “Top secret, top of the line. For the government, you know? They knew we had our hands on some and they wanted us to sell to them. I don’t know why. But we did it, it was challenging, but we did it. The heat was on our ass and we-“

“Dain.”

His rambling died. Hesitating, he took another heavy breath before continuing.

“All I know, is that I couldn’t find them anywhere,” he said, his voice flooded with enough horror to cause Lena’s suspicions to sharpen. “I don’t know anything about them but the rumours. Rumours of a secret organisation, suspicious deaths and a hell of a lot of weaponry being sold on the black market that they bought up on mass in Europe, Metropolis and now I guess they’re here. Drugs, human and alien trafficking… they’ve got their fingers in a lot of pies.”

Lena's fingers clenched.

So she was right. There was another big player in the game. Something dark, something dangerous that she had never faced before. And they weren’t just coming; they were already here. She needed to stop this now and quickly.

“A name, Dain.”

The man’s whole body began to shake.

“Iliad,” he whispered, so low that even Lena struggled to hear him.

“What, like the Greek poem?” She questioned. “Why are these people always so dramatic? Just once, can’t an evil group have a nice boring name?”

The question was for herself, but Dain’s fear just seemed to rise.

“You don’t understand! I shouldn’t even know what I know! They’re going to find me, and they’re going to kill-”

Then there was a shot. Silent, except for the splattering of Dain’s head against the wall. Dropping his body, Lena ducked on instinct. Her heart thundering in her chest, she turned to follow it’s entryway and her eyes made out the dark features of a body through the shattered glass on the opposite roof, running away.

Lena wondered why Vera hadn’t picked up on the man’s presence, then let out a groan when she realised that it must be the same dampening technology that had caused the block yesterday. With no time let to think, she threw herself out the broken window, launching across the street and catching onto the other building, clawing her way up by the time she reached the roof the shooter’s silhouette was already on the next roof. Lena followed them quickly, throwing an electric pulse grenade at their back that she hoped would knock him out. But the person, almost as if they sensed her throw, ducked out of its way.

Lena growled, before picking up her pace and ran faster. Cursing internally at the limited Harun-El she had in her system, but she still managed to hop the three roofs, wondering at the person’s speed and strength. And then, when she was within a metre of them, she launched herself forward — tackling his middle. Hoping to bring him down on the hard roof.

But of course, she should have known better. Them both falling instead through a skylight with a crash of glass, falling metres before Lena landed on top of him with a sickening crunch. Letting out a slight groan, Lena sat up noting with annoyance that the fall had knocked the man out.

She looked him over, looking for anything that could distinguish him. His gun was of high quality, but that was all she could gather. Nothing else that could mark him as different.

Resolved still to take him to one of her bolt holes for interrogation, Lena’s head whipped around at the sound of slow claps.

The man from last night, wearing an equally expensive suit, stepped out of the shadows. He was grinning at her charmingly, and four armed men flanked him. Lena stood to her feet, stepping back from the body and heard the steps all around her, cursing Vera’s loss when she realised she was surrounded.

Looking back at the man, she stood still and silent as he continued to smile.

“Twice we meet in two days, Outlier,” she charmed. “Should I feel honoured?”

Lena growled, her mind searching for an escape.

“You’ll feel honoured once my foot gets stuck up your arse,” she spat out, relieved that her essential helmets functions, like voice modifying, still worked.

The man tutted at her words.

“Such foul language. What would the people of the city say if they knew how badly their hero spoke?”

Lena’s teeth gritted.

“I’m not a hero.”

The man shrugged, and still gave her that annoying grin.

“Well, you’re no Supergirl,” he conceded, waving his hand. “And they’re scared of their shadow in the night even if they do crave your presence. But publicly, you’re too violent for their taste. Dispelling justice without any consequences. You don’t appear on TV the second they insult you to defend your honour.”

Lena stepped slowly sideways, the man following her movement until they were circling each other like hunting animals.

“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” he whispered con spiritually. “You can't fly. Bullets don't bounce off your chest. You can't bend steel with your bare hands. But criminals fear you.”

Lena’s eyes still searched around the room, noting the large crates that lined the walls and floor. And realised that this must be a factory or depot.

"I’m sure you’re sorry normal citizens do too,” he continued. "But you’d rather have that than the word on the street of what a nice person you are, wouldn’t you? That sort of talk could get you killed. But you’re going to die here tonight.”

Lena’s eyes turned to him at that, watching as his eyes darkened with bloodlust sending a shiver down her spine at their murderous intent.

“So what difference,” he purred out, deadly. “Would it have made?”

Lena took her time replying, reading her feet to a fighting stance.

“You’re not scared of me,” she taunted dangerously. “But I can’t help but wonder why you ran away last night?”

She saw it, her barb affecting him. His lips turning into a sneer. And for a brief minute, she hoped she had goaded him into a fight. But he took a breath, calmed his face and stepped back, waving his men forward.

“As much as this little conversation has entertained us all,” he soothed. “I have somewhere I need to be. Nice to talk to you… Outlier.”

The room’s tension snapped on the final word and Lena didn’t have time to think before the first spray of bullets shot towards her. Ducking and rolling forward against the hard ground, Lena launched herself at the closest masked assailant’s legs, causing him to fall back with a loud crash into the crates behind him.

Punching him hard across the face, the visor of his mask cracking, Lena left the man unconscious on the ground and scrambled behind another set of crates to hide from the next round of shots. Two still found there mark on her back, and Lena’s blood pounded in her ears as she waited for the burning sensation to eat into her skin once more.

But nothing happened, and Lena sent a quick thank you to the still offline Vera for the resin they had created. Pulling the knife strapped to her leg, Lena waited for the sound of approaching feet before she rolled once more and threw it towards another bulky man, the assailant letting out a cry when it lodged in his shoulder with a sickening splat. The man collapsed to the floor, but Lena gave him no time to scream before she ran forward and kicked him hard in the face.

Chaos now completely erupted, Lena hid in the shadows once more, waiting for more advancing men when she noticed the suited man making his escape out a side door, towards the ladder that a quick X-ray proved led towards the roof. Frustrated, and unwilling the let the man escape without getting answers, Lena locked the audio sensors in her helmet and tinted her visor, before unlocking one of her own specifically designed flash bangs into the centre of the room.

Lena waited until a dull vibration sounded before she turned her audio back on and returned her visor to normal. The groans of the remaining men in the room gave her grim satisfaction, but she was still cautious as she scuttled low towards the exit the man had taken. Closing the door behind her, locking her fist so she could melt and fuse the door shut, Lena turned to climb the ladder quickly, pulling herself up into the cold city air, standing on the roof. The man was still there, much to her relief, speaking to someone on the phone but Lena was unable to make out the words. He turned when he heard her and Lena’s focused vision made out the sharp lines of his features, even against the dark and light of the city skyline behind him.

His face warped from frustrated, to a sly grin. Hanging up the phone before Lena could trace the phone call or wonder who was at the end of the line.

“Don’t tell me you missed me already?” The man called, his voice still layered with charm and sophistication.

Lena didn’t bother to reply, no wish to monologue any longer and ran toward him, launching into the air a few feet before she reached him. Pulling back her hand for a punch, something primal and warning pinged in her mind when she realised the man didn’t look afraid. Instead, he stood relaxed with that infuriating grin on his face. But Lena couldn’t stop her trajectory now, her fist moving to slam into his jaw.

But, with a speed that couldn’t be human, the man’s hand caught her fist and stopped it. The vibration felt up, and through her body, the second Lena’s feet hit the ground the man began to squeeze. The bones in her hand started the crack, and she let out a sharp gasp, and she struggled not to drop to her knees as the man now seemed to loom over her, his sly grin turned wicked.

Lena’s eyes widened, tracing the man’s arm down to were her fist was being crushed, before darting back to look at the man’s face.

“You’re an alien?” She gasped, her mind racing with pain and confusion.

The man tilted his head, teeth-baring into a smile.

“Surprise.”

With another harsh crunch, Lena felt her fingers shatter and turn numb from the pain. Unable to react quick enough, the man let her go, before his fist slammed into her jaw, hard enough for Lena’s head to reel back and feel a burst of coppery blood in her mouth.

Stumbling slightly, her ears ringing and her head feeling dizzy, Lena tripped over her own feet and fell to her knees. Then there was a sharp kick to her ribs, the crack echoing and bouncing around her skull. It made her eyes bulge and caused her to collapse completely. The wind had been knocked clean out of her; as she lay gasping on the roof, it felt like she would never breathe again.

“Look at you,” a deep voice pierced through the agony in her mind. “Pathetic.”

Lena tried to take in a breath, but it felt like fire. She realised now that the ringing in her ears wasn’t ringing at all, but the sharp alarms from her helmet that it had been compromised and broken, even worse then it had been ever before. A shard of its broken glass dug into her forehead and Lena could already feel the warmth and stickiness of blood running from the wound and nearly into her eye.

Squinting, she looked up at the man from the ground and realised that that shattered visor must be open, and she could glare at the man with one uncovered eye, without anything blocking the fear in them. The angle causing her head to churn, though and the mocking grin on his face had turned into a harsh snarl, warping his handsome features into something dark and ugly.

In the back of her mind, Lena thought she could hear distant echoes of wild screams. Many individual voices were rolling together like a pack of wolves until none were indistinguishable from the other. And all of it was obscured by the pain.

She struggled weakly, taking in another pained breath as she tried to rise to her knees. The man arched an eyebrow at the movement, raising his foot once more to kick and roll her onto her back. The action sent another shudder through her whole body, and Lena had to resist the urge to cry.

Her mind burst with a flood of everything that she had yet to do, everything she wanted in life. And the bitter reality in the knowledge that she was going to die. And suddenly, it didn’t matter what she wanted, or who these men were or that she had a city to protect.

Nothing mattered at all.

“You know,” the man spoke calmly, still standing above her as he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe away her blood from his fingers.

“You really shouldn’t underestimate people.”

Lena’s head rolled slightly, as her mind began to drift in and out of consciousness.

“Now you, for example,” the man continued. “I didn’t underestimate you at all.”

He placed a heavy shoe on her chest, pressing down hard enough that tears sprung in her eyes. Leaving her unable to even claw at them to get them off.

“You can fight, I’ll give you that,” he mocked with feral eyes, leaning over her. “You can fight and beat up all these street thugs and drug dealers. You can make this city scared of you, but you can’t make them love you.”

He pressed down further, Lena’s pained side pulsed with agony.

"But you want them too, don’t you?” He hissed, his poisonous voice blocking every other sound out of her mind. “Oh, you bluster and fumble and shroud yourself in the darkness you’ve adopted. But my people were born from it, moulded by it.

Lena’s fingers clenched, and she tried to breathe,

“You were broken by it,” the man spat, sounding insulted. “And have only deigned to glue the pieces of your shattered self back together.”

A cough built in Lena’s throat, pained and scratchy, but she was unable to get it out. It just burned like acid, and she tried to gather some strength. Turning to glare at him with her bare eye, the man continued to stare down at her with a sneer.

“You’re… a mad fuck… aren’t you,” she panted, the effort of the words making her throat ache.

The man though seemed delighted by her words and smiled. Lena guessed then that her statement was right. Stepping off her, she was able to take in her first gust of free air and finally let out a hacking cough.

“Sometimes its only madness that makes us what we are,” the man whimsically noted. “That’s why you’ll never able to win against what’s coming.”

Lena tried to focus on his words, catalogue them in some way to be mulled over later, but her whole body still thrummed with pain and a sense of defeat. Something she wasn’t at all accustomed to. Lena tried to find a reason, a reason or a way out, but she couldn’t see it.

Couldn’t think about it. And with Vera offline, there was only that unending and unearthly howl of voices in the back of her mind to keep her company in what she knew would be her final moments. The man was playing with her like a cat with a mouse, but there was death in his eyes and Lena could recognise a killer when she saw one.

“That’s why I beat you today,” the man crowed, as Lena’s fingers scrabbled weakly. Searching for something, she didn’t know what. “That’s why we all will keep beating this annoying, wretched city.”

At that, Lena felt a stab of anger. And the fear in her heart that she had been using for full all these long years rose once more.

She shifted her hand, a sudden thought piercing her foggy thoughts.

"You see, we’ve both looked into the abyss I think, you and I,” he continued, unknowing or maybe uncaring that she was focusing every single ounce of her dimming strength into her unbroken arm.

He let out a laugh.

“The only difference is… you blinked,” he hissed.

She moved to turn her head, but sharp digging fingers grabbed at her chin, forcing her to look into his dark eyes now that he had dropped to a knee and his face hovered a few inches above hers.

“I can see it,” he whispered, the shadows of the city dancing on his face. “In your eyes. You think you know fear, but you don't know fear half as well as it knows you.”

Keeping her face locked on him, his free hand drifted down her armour pressing against her injured side and making her wince. Until it lingered at her leg, and his maniacal girl bared teeth.

“But we… shall be your reckoning.”

Lena moved her fist at that, but she barely shifted it an inch when his hand gripped and tightened on her leg. A sharp snap sounded out, and Lena’s back arched as she let out a bloodcurdling scream.

It felt as if her entire leg had been shattered under his still tight grip, the muscles around it screaming too as if a white-hot poker had replaced what was left of the bone. Spasms rocked Lena’s body now, the pain of it all having blown out every inch of strength she had left and her hand opened to fall flat against the roof in time with her body. Lena felt her eyes flutter through tears she couldn’t stop from falling, but could no longer find the voice to scream when the man stood up once more, pressing off her broken leg as if it were a step.

Lena could hear his feet shift against the rooftop, but it was so slow now. As if the agony had melted away time itself along with everything else. In a few short minutes, this man had done something that nobody else in her life had been able to do. Completely clearing her mind of anything human, anything rational, and leaving behind devoid darkness.

She stared up into the sky, searching for nothing, when almost as if it were fate a patch of stars broke through the light pollution of the city, making Lena take a shuddering breath. And then the howls in her mind stopped, leaving behind one single voice. A man’s voice, sold and cruel, echoing dark memories and hours of training. She was steeped in pain and death and vengeance. And injected with strength.

Get up.

“They say that when you kill a man, you not only take away what he was but all he will ever be,” the suited man’s voice rang out.

Lena’s head lolled to the side, staring up at him once more as a flood of final adrenaline and power filled her body once more. Weaving between her injuries, and blocking away the worst of her pain behind a dam wall. Just like she had been taught.

“I wonder if it’s the same with women?” He grinned, before shrugging, reaching for the gun at his waist. “The devil alone knows, I guess.”

The words shattered in Lena’s mind, along with everything else and it all came rushing back to her.  Her unbroken hand clenched once more, and her muscles tightened.

“A good thing you’re not the devil then,” she croaked out, “You’re just practice.”

Before he could even blink at her words, Lena pressed a series of buttons on her palm with her fingers, rolling her wrist back as a footlong blade of pure Nth metal slid out with a sharp hiss, locking into place. With all of her newfound strength, Lena let out a roar and rolled onto her broken side, stabbing the blade up and clean through the man’s thigh, blood spraying out when she withdrew it with a lurch.

The man let out a pained scream, staggering backwards and falling to his knees, clutching at the wound to stop the pour of blue blood. Lena didn’t have time to think on it, taking the seconds she had won for herself to withdraw her blade and roll with gritted teeth the few feet needed to fall off the roof, just escaping the grabbing fist of the man as he recovered some sense.

The whistling of the air rush past her and the alarms from her helmet continued to scream when her glider called by one of the buttons she had pressed and smoking on one side, clearly hit by something, flying by and caught her out of the air with a magnetic pull.

Lena felt her body crumple and cried when it hit the metal, but was all too grateful for the fast speed it was flying to take her far away from the roof she had nearly died on. She didn’t know if it was a few minutes, or a few hours or a few years, but the alarms in her helmet finally died as emergency systems activated. Vera’s voice, still static and scrambled, eventually returned.

“Boss?” She blipped, sounded frantic for a robot. “Boss, can you hear me?”

Lena felt the wind rushing over her, whipping so fast she would have fallen off it wasn’t for her gliders magnetic clamps. She turned her head slightly so it wouldn’t hit her bare eye and cause her to cry any more than she already had.

“Get me home, Vera,” she whispered before she slipped out of consciousness.

With a hard hit to her knee, Lena fell to the mat. Feeling the rage spike in her heart, she glared up at the dark-haired man who had knocked her down and was circling her with a stoic expression.

“You have learnt to bury your guilt with anger,” he said calmly, unflabble to her mood the same way he had for weeks since she had sought him out. “I will teach you to confront it and face the truth.”

Lena stood to her feet, retaking her stance before going on the offensive immediately, trying to find a gap in his defence she could sneak through.

But the man, stepping back quickly as if they were in a trained danced, didn’t give her an opening, blocking her attacks easily with his escrima sticks. When she had him on the edge, he moved smoothly to the side, causing her to lurch forward with her own force, before he landed a harsh hit across her face that left her ears ringing.

"You know how to fight six men,” he continued while she cupped her cheek and shook her head.” I can teach you how to face six hundred.”

Lena turned, spitting blood on the mat before she wiped the back of her hand across her mat. He turned to face her once more, dark eyes still hard and unforgiving.

“You know how to disappear,” he continued, throwing his sticks away to face her with a new stance.

Not willing to do the same, because fights were never fair, she rushed him once more with her own raised. He blocked them quickly once more, grabbing one and kneeing her hard in the stomach, forcing her to bend over, winded and gasping. Falling to her knees once more, she held herself up with one trembling arm while he walked around her.

“I can teach you to become truly invisible,” he continued mildly. “A ninja understands that invisibility is a matter of patience and agility.”

Lena clenched her fists, recognising his jab at her bullheaded attitude.

“Always mind your surroundings,” he emphasised. “You can employ explosive powders. As weapons or as distractions.”

Catching her breath, she stood up once more. Her own sticks abandoned in favour of shifting to a Muay Thai stance. The man raised an eyebrow, cracking a slight and rare smile. Mimicking her posture, he once again waited for her to attack.

“Theatricality and deception can become powerful agents,” he still lectured. “You must become more than just a woman in the mind of your opponent. Criminals thrive on the indulgence of societies understanding.”

Lena frowned but rushed him anyway. The man was blocking her every blow, catching her leg in its roundhouse kick and delivering a sharp blow of his own to her knee. Wincing at the pain, she stumbled back once more. Favouring her leg, she threw another weak and desperate punch, but the man caught her arm, slipping underneath and twisting her arm into a joint lock.

“What happened to Kara was not your fault,” he hissed in her ear as she tried to struggle against the burn in her arms and shoulder.

He paused before a beat, before letting her go and shoving her forward, making her fall once more and roll across the mat with a hard thud. Standing over her, he waited until she was looking at his face from the mat and tilted his head.

“It was hers.”

Lena’s eyes widened at his words, her mouth turning into a snarl as rage filled her. Finding new strength, she kicked up off the floor and charged him once more. Leaping off the floor with trained ease, she aimed a kick at his head.

Surprisingly, the hit landed, knocking his head back. Standing before him once more, feeling grim satisfaction as he touched a finger to the split lip she had given him and the trick of blood there.

“Anger does not change the fact that she failed to act,” he answered to the blow, looking at her with hard eyes. “Would your brother have stopped you?”

Lena's eyes narrowed, and adrenaline flooded her veins.

“I’ve had training,” she spat. “Training to fight people exactly like him and withstand the worst of pain.”

For the first time that night, fury filled his face. Launching toward her, he aimed a fast launch of kicks and punches, leaving her on the back foot and forced to stumble back barely blocking them.

“Training is nothing; will is everything!” He shouted. “The will to act.”

Lena let out a scream throwing her whole body towards him and landing him flat on his back. Kneeling above him, she raised a fist.

“Yield.”

The man arched his eyebrow again, giving her an amused look.

“You haven’t beaten me, you’ve sacrificed your footing for a killing stroke.”

Before she could blink, he twisted his body, knocking her knees out until he had reversed their positions and had her at his advantage. Without hesitation, he punched her square across the jaw, causing her to see stars.

Later, they sat together on the mat, a cup of herbal tea in their hands and they took small sips in the silence while Lena tried not to groan at the sharp pains in her whole body. The man, in comparison, could sit straight.

Observing her with a clinical eye, he spoke softly.

“You are stronger than her.”

Lena tried not to allow the memories of Kara to cloud her thoughts, but she still frowned down at her tea.

“You don’t know her,” she muttered.

The man shrugged, looking away, and his eyes growing distant.

“But I know the rage that drives you,” he answered quietly, the words still echoing around the room. “An impossible anger that strangles the grief until the memory of your loved one is just poison in your veins.”

His voice almost grew cracked, and Lena looked up at him, recognising his sadness at once.

“And then one day you catch yourself wishing that the person you loved had never existed at all,” he continued. “So you’d be spared your pain.”

The words spoke to her. The hollowness in her soul was finally given a voice. She continued to watch him, the man looking back at her as if he had forgotten she was even there.

“I didn’t always lurk in the dark alleys of National City,” he explained. “Once I had a son, my whole heart. He was taken from me.”

Cold anger filled his eyes, and Lena recognised that too.

“Like you, I was forced to learn there are people without decency that must be fought without hesitation or pity,” he spat before his voice calmed and he gave her a hard look. “Your anger gives you great power, but if you let it, it will destroy you. As it almost did me.”

Lena clenched her teeth.

“What stopped it?” She asked.

“Vengeance,” he answered immediately.

Lena felt deflated, looking away from him.

“That’s no help to me.”

The man gave her a long, hard look. It was laced with darkness and wicked promise.

“Why, Lena?” He husked. “Why did you not avenge your love?”

And she thought of her brother, locked away in a cell, and her knuckles whitened.

She woke with a gasp, with Vera’s voice in her ear. Lena was on her roof, hovering above the small entrance to her armoury and she could barely breathe.

Falling off the glider, it disassembled with a hiss, locking itself until it sat on Lena’s back. She scrabbled for the entrance hatch, and all but fell down the small shaft into her secret room. Unable to let out the cry of pain, the impact had on what was no doubt her shattered knee. The panic in her body, leftover vestiges now that the adrenaline had finally fled, left her with a beating heart and a seemingly impossible amount of pain from the injuries the man had caused her. Flicking the emergency button on her helmet, the broken and crushed pieces cracked and fell to the floor leaving a spattering of glass on the floor that crunched underneath her boots as she all but hopped over to the medical cot she had set up in the corner. The blood caused by the fist punching through her visor that and sent a shard slicing through her skin continued to flow if a bit slower now that it began to clot.

Still unable to use Harun-El this early in the cycle, Lena had to settle with injecting herself with a fast-acting painkiller and with her uninjured hand started to strip away the pieces of her polymer armour slowly.

It looked worse then she thought, even through one eye as she struggled to see through the crusting blood. Her knee was already as swollen like a melon, purpling bruising forming and her hand and wrist were well and truly shattered, bent into an inhuman angle and numbness radiating along with heat.

Pressing her onsite computer into life, Lena was relieved to hear Vera’s voice once again sounding.

“Boss, tracking of the suspect-“

“No updates, Vera,” Lena winced through tight teeth, starting to feel lightheaded again. “Just a full body scan. I need… I….”

There was a microsecond where Lena feared she was about to faint before Vera’s voice shook her out of it.

“Patellar Fracture in your left knee and a tibia fracture. Metacarpal fracture in your right hand, phalanges and the carpal bone have suffered the same. Severe bruising, torn muscles and two of your ribs are cracked. Your stress levels are high, and there is a deep laceration on your forehead. I would recommend immediate medical assistance-“

“Well, that’s not happening,” Lena gasped, with her undamaged hand reaching out for one of her engineered biopads and unsteadily peeling it open.

“You know I can’t go to the hospital.”

Slapping the pad of her head wound, Lena fell an immediate rush of relief at least from that single area. Her headache was spreading out dimming slightly. She tried to take a deep, slow breath, without her ribs cracking in agony.

“For now… I need antibiotics… more painkillers… and I need to… splint the injuries.”

Her medical station shuffled robotically after her instructions, the correct dosage for antibiotics appearing for her use. Lena thanked her foresight at that moment for creating Vera in the first place so that when situations like this arose, she didn’t have to think too hard.

Stabbing her self with the needle, not even wincing at the feeling, Lena let out an exhausted groan as she suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion battling with the pain and stress.

“My prediction that Ms Danvers and Kieran will discover your secret identity has increased to 97.99% in the next day.”

Lena grunted, trying not to even think about the disastrous spill her life had entered into in the single day since Kara had shown up on her doorstep. Through, in a brief moment of clarity, the logical part of her brain had to consider that maybe it was always headed for this. The adage that when it rains, it pours had never been more evident than now. The rising of this new shadow group, Iliad. All the deaths they had caused. Her near death twice in two nights. Kara coming back with a child that shouldn’t exist, and then there were the things that she knew Kara wasn’t telling her.

It was all too much, at all the same time.

For the first time in months, Lena found herself far too overwhelmed, and tears began to slip down her cheeks. For so long, she had one mission and goal, protecting this city from itself. And it worked for her, isolating into her singular obsession. But now everything was coming to hit her. Feelings that she had back behind a wall that was now cracking and letting everything fall out. Lena couldn’t help the ominous feeling in her soul that all that was going on was a precursor for something far worse on the horizon.

That was without even touching on the fact that she was now technically a parent. Even through her hazed pain, Lena was already ending on frustration at the few days wait it would take before she could use the Harun-El to heal her injuries.

Nearly an hour of difficult finagling, Lena had managed to splint her leg and hand somewhat haphazardly, as well as changing the pad on her forehead, she began the slow and painful limp towards the couch. Bracing herself on the wall and trying to concoct some terrible lie to tell Kara once she found her when she woke up. Not that Kara would believe her, but she had a very limited licence to criticise her for withholding the truth given the whole Supergirl debacle and the half baked not-saids that had occurred all day.

Maybe she could say she was in an accident. That was… technically correct. It was an accident for her to get as injured as she had.

But right now, she just wanted to drink herself into total oblivion, drift off into sleep and pray that nightmares didn’t haunt her waking dreams.

It was only once she had painfully lowered herself onto her couch and looked up, that she realised that the fridge light was on and the door open. The small figure on Kiera illuminated by the soft white grow. 

“Oh, shit.,” Lena swore under her breath, her heart lurching and a small strange part of herself feeling sincere regret that the child she was utterly failing to distance herself from emotionally had observed her in such a state.

The little girl looked, unusually, rattled. Her wide and intelligent eyes were flickering in shock that Lena could make out in the dark. She places the glass of half drunk milk in her hand on the counter, before closing the fridge door and padding gently towards Lena. The woman’s eyes adjusted once more, even though all her muscles seized in an involuntary response to run as far as she could.

“You’re hurt,” Kieran sounded out, making Lena laugh weakly.

Throwing the whole situation to hell, she scrabbled for the half drunk bottle of whisky tucked under the couch in case of emergencies and struggled with the cap before taking a swig, well aware that the girl’s eyes were still watching her all too unnervingly intent. Something Lena was learning seemed to be a character trait of the three-year-old.

Eyeing her back through her good eye, Lena let the familiar burn settle in her chest before she replied.

“An astute observation,” she husked out.

Kieran didn’t reply, continuing to watch her and in Lena’s slightly knocked out and pained state, she finally pegged the thing that made spending time with the girl so unnerving. She didn’t move as one would expect of a three-year-old. No twitches or head tilts. Not a single sway or misplaced blink. She stood more like a trained soldier.

Lena didn’t think she’d ever been able to explain why that made her feel even fonder and protective of the child.

“I’m sorry you have to see me this way,” Lena continued quietly, wincing as she leant back into the couch. “It must be a bit of a shock.”

Kieran continued to watch her without many expressions before a small flicker of quiet strength seemed to fill her posture. Her hands reached out, pulling for Lena’s touch.

“I can help,” she whispered, firmly and concerned all at once.

Lena felt her eyelids grow heavy and she gave the girl a small, tight, smile.

“I’m sure you can, darling,” she whispered.  “But I’d prefer to use the healing powers of whisky in this case.”

Theoretically, she knew that the constant references to alcohol and displays of her driving probably weren’t a positive influence on the kid, something told her innately that this child had already seen things that would make grown men shudder.

“No,” Kieran insisted. “I can help.”

Lena frowned before her mouth dropped slightly. Kieran’s hands, once again reaching out for her, started to glow with a soft white light that seemed to soften and pulse around her skin. It seemed warm, gentle and entirely inhuman. Without stopping her, far too shocked, Lena watched as the child hovered one of her hand at the side of her head and the other over her heart.

It started as a quick itch, not painful but never before experienced, grew warm and hot in every single injured part of herself. Her broken ribs seemed to sew together, the speed of Lena’s full and unpaired breath making her snap straight up. She could almost feel the skin on her forehead ripple as the deep cut grew back together. Her broken fingers popped suddenly, the swelling reducing like a deflated balloon and the skin returning to its usual pale shade. Finally, after one last defiant throb, her knee melded back together along with her broken tibia, leaving her entire body whole as if she had never been injured at all.

Kieran’s hands dropped, and Lena continued to stare at her while her overwrought brain tried to process precisely what had happened. Peeling away the now-defunct bandage on her head, Lena let her calloused fingertips slowly graze over where the cut had been, finding only a thin ridge that she guessed upon further inspection would only leave a faint silvery scar. She flexed her hand, that had been swollen like a football not two minutes before, and found herself breathless at the ease of free movement. That, and her healed ribs and leg made her entire body shake in shock. Even the acid burns from the night before had healed.

Her eyes turned to the child in front of her, the mystery surrounding her deepening even more. Lena struggled to find the words and all she could do was stare at the child who didn’t seem the slightest bit exhausted or nonplussed at the gift she had just displayed.

All she did was watch her, with eyes precisely like Kara’s but a hardness in her stare that was far too like Lena. 

“How did… How….?”

Lena let her own words fall, unable to finish them as she shook her head.

For the first time since they had met, Lena finally saw a flash of the girl’s actual edge shine through. Uncertainty mixed with a sort of unbridled confidence that only children seemed to be able to master.

“I’m clever,” Kieran answered quietly, soft now without the thick wall that she had projected to Lena for the past day.

“Yes,” Lena whispered back. “I think something more than just clever.”

Her eyes took in the girl once more, trying to tally every scrap of information she had been given and observed over the past few hours since they had met. It was a given that the child would probably have Kryptonian powers, that much Kara had told her anyway. But the way Kieran carried herself, almost as if she was as old as time while still reverting to a childlike need and behaviours in certain aspects made Lena intrigued, and slightly fearful, of what exactly the child before her was. Had something in her usual conception also resulted in the incredible healing abilities and intelligence she displayed?

Startling Lena from her thoughts was when Kieran’s head ducked, a flash of upset in her eyes. Subconsciously, Lena reached out to comfort the child only to halt herself in her nervousness over what such a gesture would mean. Instead, her hand hovered until it reluctantly dropped to her side. 

“Don’t tell Yeyu,” Kieran whispered. “She asked me not to show you.”

At that, Lena frowned. A splash of anger and confusion growing in her chest, adding already to the pile that she had tried to shove to the side surrounding Kara, Kieran and the secrets they all seemed to have.

“Why did she do that?” Lena asked.

The girl looked up, biting her lower lip in a way that despite her anger made Lena ache for the familiar gesture from Kara.

“I don’t know,” Kieran replied.

Lena sat back slightly, staring at Kieran when a sudden thought crossed her mind. That despite the weirdness of the situation, and how suddenly this had been sprung on her. Despite the mystery, and being Outlier, and the problems in the city, the issues between her and Kara and the distinct strange traits Kieran was displaying… the child was her’s too. And even though a part of herself wanted to find out exactly what was going on with every unexplained thing in her life, the more significant part she had been holding back commiserated with a small, gifted and lonely child that had experienced such tumultuous changes in her few years.

She tried not to think of all the dark things that she had experienced these past few years either. Things that she had done that would change her forever, leaving stains on her soul that she would never be able to wash clean.

Reaching out gently, palm facing up, Lena smiled softly at Kieran. The child stared at the offered hand for a beat, before taking it with her own and Lena felt her heart flutter slightly as their fingers, so different in size and texture, laced together.

“What else can you do?”

Chapter Text

Her ears were ringing as she blinked awake on the cold metal floor. She felt an aching through her body; muscles stretched and bruised from the sudden blast that had flung her across the room. It took her a few seconds to realise that the ringing in her ears wasn’t from the explosion, but the alarms blaring through the entire compound.

“Wake up!”

The shout sounded far away and echoed in her ears, but she struggled to do as it bid and regain some semblance of reality again. Pressing her hands to the floor, she tried to push herself up. Her arms trembled at the effort until a rough hand grabbed her elbow and helped haul her to her feet.

Kara let out a groan at the sudden lurch but managed to steady herself against the tall body. Sharper feelings returning to her body, and she felt the dampness dripping from her forehead that left red smears on her fingers when she reached to touch it. Hissing at the sting, Kara looked around the room groggily. The door had been blown apart with the explosion, the men guarding her now shredded with enough shrapnel to kill three elephants. Syringes, vials and the equipment they had planned to use were scattered and tables upturned. The light from the ceiling swung broken and flickering.

“I cut the power,” the man’s rough voice cut in on her scattered thoughts. “We’ve got about ten seconds before that alarm brings an entire team down here.”

Kara blinked up at the man, his face grim before he shoved a gun into her hand.

She cocked it automatically, her training taking over as she steadied herself on her feet.

“We need to go,” the man continued, already walking towards the blown apart hallway with his gun at the ready.

Kara felt adrenaline flood her, pushing away everything else, she squared her jaw and followed him.

“Where’s Kieran?”

His eyes scanned the first corridor, blanketed in the red light of the alarms.

“I got her out, don’t worry.”

Kara nodded, feeling some relief at the news even if it was overcome with anxiety over her daughter being out in the world and away from her.

She didn’t trust anybody but a select few, and nobody with her daughter but one.

They flanked the exploded gap in the wall, Kara scanning as well before she nodded for the man to move.

“Go.”

They ran down the corridor together, stepping the familiar ground. Racing past doors and turns, everything started to blur as she focused on following what she hoped was the path to escape. Kara caught movement on her left and ducked suddenly under the knife that had been thrown her way, embedding itself in the wall at the same height her head had been. Yanking it free, she released a shot at the assailant running towards her with another knife poised to throw. Time froze when they reached her, and she dropped to a knee, letting the swing of the blade cut over her again as she seized her opening and drove the knife she held deep into their thigh. The assailant dropped their guard when their leg collapsed, and she executed a shot to temple without hesitation, before turning the gun to another opponent fighting the man with her.

She shot them in the chest the instant they left an opening.

Leaving both bodies behind them, they kept running together. The lower they descended, the more men they came across and left behind in crumpled heaps. Finally, reaching the cargo hold, the man led Kara through wider halls before a large metal door hissed open and revealed a dozen armed guards. Kara pressed him against the wall and yanked him into a side room, avoiding the spray of bullets by a hair. Slamming his hand down onto the door shutter, the man pulled Kara towards the small, body-sized windows running the bottom length of the far wall. Shattering it with a shot, the howling of cold wind filled the room and pulled at their clothes.

“Ok, come on!” The man shouted over the roar.

Kara fell to the ground without question, pushing herself out feet first into the cold. The man kept a hold of her hands, suspending her as she dangled in the cold air of the mountain. There must have been fifty feet of snow below her, but the fall was still long.

And in the dark and a snowstorm, Kara didn’t trust their chances of escape before they either died of the cold or got caught.

Before she could think, a sudden bang sounded from inside the compound, and the man let out a shout of pain. Dropping one of her hands, Kara swung precariously and scrambled to hold on to the thin ledge.

Looking back at him with wide eyes, her mouth opening in horror at the spear that was now lanced through the right side of his chest. The black weapon, identifying its owner and slicked with blood, caused a flash of terror in Kara’s heart.

“No!” She shouted, watching as a trickle started to run from the corner of the man’s mouth. A sudden vibrating shudder ran through both their bodies, someone tried to pull him back inside by his feet, and the man’s grip on her loosened.

“You have to go now,” he gasped out, struggling in agony as the spear was yanked from the other side again. “It’s half a mile down the mountain to the first mark…. I’ve left a transport.”

He shouted when the spear was pulled clean through his body, his back arching.

“Go find her… She’s in the place we talked about,” he managed to choke out, letting go of his grip.

But she still clung to him.

“Not without you,” she insisted frantically.

His face was pale; more blood dribbled down his chin.

“Let… go.”

His body was suddenly back inside; she had no choice. Letting out a silent scream, she fell into the snowstorm.

And Kara couldn’t fly.

Kara woke with a strangled gasp. Her heart pounded in her chest, the memory of the night she was finally able to escape the compound jolting through her whole body like an electric shock.

She didn’t remember everything about that night after the fall, just walking for what felt like hours in the cold, until everything she was and had the ability to be was gone, and only one memory was left.

Her daughter.

Her fingers stretched automatically for the space beside her, and she sat bolt upright in bed when she found it empty of the small body that was nearly always glued by her side. The sense of deep fear that formed her foundations rose once more, and it took her half a second for her brain to register where she was and that Kieran, whose voice she could hear laughing from another room, was undoubtedly safe. They were in what was probably the most secure apartment in the city, both Lena’s reassurances and her own inspection proving that.

Once her fear vanished, her face folded into a frown.

Kieran… laughing?

She couldn’t remember the last time her daughter had laughed. But given the grim reality that had been their situation in the long weeks since their escape… Given the reality of the life Kieran had grown up in thus far, it was more than understandable.

And that sickened Kara to her stomach.

She wasn’t idiotic enough to be lulled into a false sense of security where their escape was concerned. Kara knew that those at the compound would no doubt already know where she and her daughter was, but she also knew that they would keep their distance.

For now.

Kara pushed out of bed, her feet hitting the cold floor with a soft pad at the same time she caught the soft murmur of Lena’s voice, but unable the catch the words. A pang of sickness churned in her stomach, along with a wave of exhaustion. Once again however long she had slept, resulted in zero increase in her energy levels and she felt as tired, if not more so, then when she had fallen into bed the night before. It had been nearly five years now since her powers had been stolen from her, and yet every day she woke up feeling the keen sting of their loss. Like a phantom limb, the pained her at their absence. She could never get quite used to the way her body would ache after a hit, or how it’s stamina even at the peak of health wasn’t even a tenth of what she had once had. And before, when she could have been able to see through walls and overhear whatever was going on between her daughter and Lena, it would feel normal. Now, these human ears grated at her frustration.

Standing to her feet, she walked towards the patched bag she had brought with her the hopes of finding a clean shirt to wear. Turning once she had pulled the old one off, she caught sight of herself in the mirror and couldn’t help but pause. Her body, once so strong and sturdy, had lost its sheen. She still had tight muscles, years of training had seen to that, but her skin looked thin, covering them. Then there were the slow changes that happened to her body every single day. Her once sun-golden hair, now closer to bronze, grew faster than ever. Simple bumps would cause blooming bruises that wouldn’t fade just spending time in the sun. And she could feel the lingering strangeness in her left knee, a dislocation that despite assurances of it being fully healed, never entirely left her. A lean athlete now, with only thin silver scars, a gaunt face and dark bags under her eyes from constant nightmares.

She supposed she should consider herself lucky that last night’s had only been about her escape from the compound. It had been the most common one in the rotation for the past month since it had happened, the memory of one of the few real friends she had made there, dying for her and Kieran’s chance of freedom was not something she was ever likely to forget.

But still, it wasn’t the worst.

And now, everything had changed.

She hesitated at the bedroom door, her fingers lingering over the handle. As unsteady and unsure as she had been since the minute she had decided to come back to National City and finally face Lena again. Each year that had passed since she found out she was pregnant, built on the anxiety of imagining the moment she would meet Lena again, and reveal Kieran’s existence.

She had played it over and over in her mind so often, trying to think of every possible reaction that Lena could have, and every year only made the scenarios all the more outlandish and a hundred times worse. Kara wondered what Lena would think of her; she wondered what she would think of Kieran.

Would she hate her? Hate their daughter? Reject them on the spot and vow to loathe Kara with every fibre of her being for never telling her?

Deep down, Kara knew that wouldn’t happen, which was why she had gambled to come here. Lena was too gentle, too kind to the things that linked to her heart for her to turn them away in Kara’s hour of need. Not when they were in danger.

Kara clenched her fists, pushing it out of her mind as much as she could. The coping techniques she had spent years cultivating already threatening to collapse now.

But she couldn’t let them, not when they were still hunted.

Opening the door quietly, she walked down the hall and towards the sounds of her daughter, her nose twitching as she picked up on the smell of cinnamon in the air. Turning the final corner, Kara blinked and her mouth gapped slightly at the situation in front of her.

Kieran, sitting in a chair in what looked like a hastily put together makeshift booster seat, beaming with such a broad smile that Kara could almost feel an essential piece of herself crumble. For once her daughter looked like her age, without the sombre and suspicious air that had cultivated in her since the moment, she was first able to grasp the change in their situation at the compound. The shift from them being there by choice, to being all but prisoners.

Her daughter was already destined to be different; from the second she was born, she had displayed signs of extraordinary development compared to other human children. It made some of the members of the compound uneasy to watch a two-year-old reading literature most college students would fail to comprehend, but Kara found it comforting. A reminder of Krypton and the lessons all children would learn there at a similar age.

And it reminded her of Lena.

Though nearly everything that Kieran did reminded her of Lena.

Lena who she had spent years trying to hold back memories of, and all interaction. And for years she had been unable to tell her exactly why she had left, why she hadn’t come back sooner, and why she had never told her about Kieran.

And she still couldn’t tell her — not everything.

Not yet.

Kara swallowed the lump in her throat that Kieran’s smile had caused, training herself not to cry, before her eyes turned to Lena.

But looking at Lena never failed to take her breath away. 

She had changed so much too in the years since she had left. So much more physically, then Kara had expected. The image of Lena in her mind was so different from the version that existed in front of her now, yet oddly precisely the same. Gone was any soft beauty, or soft edges. The curves were still there, but they were sharper. Muscles trained for self-defence had been raised and sharpened so much, the first thought Kara had when Lena had opened the door to her apartment the first time was that Lena now looked less like a woman carved from marble to a warrior goddess in the same stone.

Her second thought had been the amount of physical injuries covering the entirety of Lena’s body. All but dragging Lena to her bed that first morning, her brain exploded with a whole other timeline of what Lena’s life had been like since she had left.

Information of her had been scarce at the compound, and Kara made it her mission to be extremely careful how much checking up she did on the people she had left behind. And anything about Lena’s life she knew least at all, withholding the full truth of Kieran’s parentage from everyone there at the start. She knew enough from the scraps she had managed to collect that Lena’s public presence had almost immediately ended once she had gone, and the second it had any more information she might have hoped for was lost anyway.

She had wanted, and dreaded, for Lena to have found some way to move on from everything that had happened between them. Kara knew that her presence in Lena’s life was never going to be conducive to any healing for the other woman. There were too many wounds between them. Too much damage inflicted, too much attempts at fragile healing and far too much investment on either side.

But whatever she had imagined certainly couldn’t live up to the woman she had been reunited with. Despite the mysterious injuries, there was a change in Lena’s attitude itself. There was a new hardness in her eyes, that to Kara looked less like her old cold facade, and more like a raw and untamed fire, that threatened to burn out of control with every second that they were open. 

But her mind wasn’t allowed to mull that over for even another second this morning, the injected shock of seeing Lena standing and cooking breakfast when just yesterday she hadn’t had so much as a carrot in her fridge and looked like she lived on a combined diet of whisky, takeout and dust. 

“What’s going on here?” Kara asked uncertainly.

Kieran turned at her voice, the smile now directed at her making her heart leap even though she remained wary of the situation. Jumping off her chair, it wobbling behind her, Kieran ran to grab Kara’s hand. Pulling her along behind her, she seated Kara far harder than she’d probably intended, before scampering off into the kitchen and returning with a full plate of steaming hot food.

“Look, Yeyu!” She said delightedly, putting the plate in front of Kara. “Lena made pancakes!”

Kara stared down at the food, blinking in confusion at Lena’s newfound return to her old culinary abilities. She risked a glance at the other woman at the thought, a blank second of longing passing through her as Lena’s bicep shifted when she flipped a pancake before she finally landed cautiously on her face.

“You… made breakfast?”

Lena didn’t even look at her, just a curt nod in response.

Since Kara had arrived, catapulted probably being the more appropriate word, she had been on a wary footing with Lena. She was harbouring secrets that she wasn’t willing to share, but Kara suspected there were equal ones on Lena’s part. Why the sudden change in her physique? Born of a rigorous training regime. And Kara had inspected Lena’s injuries and scars for long enough that first morning to know that Lena had been in fights. Kara knew enough about injuries to know that some of the scars had come from things that should have killed her, and when she had pulled off Lena’s shirt as gently as she could, Kara had been unable to stop the gasp that had escaped her. Acid burns, knife wounds, bullets… But they were faded in a way that confused Kara. As if Lena had been hurt years before, apart from the fresh wounds, which she knew for sure couldn’t possibly be the case.

Kara had her suspicions as to what Lena had been doing in National City since she’d left, but right now her focus was less on Lena’s activities and more that Lena was obviously, and rightly, furious with her.

It was hardly her place to worry about someone she had left behind.

“Thank you.”

Lena didn’t acknowledge that either, just turned away and dropped the now used pan in the sink to be washed. Kara slowly started to eat her food, watching out of the corner of her eye as Lena took her plate and sat down opposite her, silently eating a forkful.

Kara was confused, the tension between them was awkward, and for once, Kieran seemed oblivious.

“Yeyu cooks really good too!” Her daughter proclaimed, her mouth smeared in enough syrup to have Kara’s fingers itch for a napkin. “She always makes the best breakfast.”

Kieran turned her dazzling smile to her and Kara tried to return it, but she was afraid all she delivered in response was a tight line.

“Before you were born,” Lena’s low voice suddenly rumbled, startling Kara who was still unused to the sound. “Your mother couldn’t even boil water.”

Kara spluttered, awkwardness forgotten.

“That’s not true!” Indignant at the words.

For the first time since she sat down, Lena looked up from her plate and directly at Kara’s eyes.

“Yeah, it is,” she replied dryly. “I’m pretty sure you’ve burnt cereal.”

Kieran let out a plea of laughter at the words, her gaze shifting back and forth between Lena and Kara seemingly fascinated by the way Lena’s words had thrown her mother off-kilter.

“I’ve never burnt cereal,” Kara grumbled, poking at her pancakes. “And I’ve always been able to cook.”

There was a second, a flash on Lena’s face where Kara was transported back to a time before everything had gone wrong. An edge of humour that left behind a ghost of a smile.

“You’d never even eaten asparagus before we met.”

Lena’s eyes still burned as they watched her, but instead of making her wary of being hurt, Kara found herself entranced with the green fire.

“Well,” she breathed, feeling a blush crawling up the back of her neck. “Now it’s my favourite vegetable.”

Lena watched her for a few more seconds, a strange feeling passing for a fleeting moment before it vanished, and the anger returned to her eyes. Kara found her whole body deflated once it did, and she looked back down to her plate.

Not feeling the slightest bit hungry.

“My favourite vegetable is potatoes.”

Kara looked up at her daughter, the words so earnest and innocent she couldn’t help but smile. The feeling of Lena still watching her redrew Kara’s attention to her face, but as it always did when Kieran was happy, Kara felt uplifted too. It must have read on her face because Lena’s angry fire lifted and the softness returned once again.

“Mine’s-“

“Kale.”

Kara didn’t know why she cut in. Maybe it was the long-forgotten jokes about Lena’s inability to move on from kale smoothies, or that Kara’s diet consisted of far more Big Belly Burger then was prudent. But it was something more than just that. It was the baffling and warped situation they were currently in, which was sending Kara’s mind into a tailspin. The three of them, sitting down to a home-cooked breakfast like they were some sort of functioning and typical family when they very much weren’t. Between Lena and herself, Kara didn’t want to even speculate at the amount of psychological and physical damage they had been put through in their lives. And their three-year-old, which Lena didn’t even know existed until yesterday, was probably the most powerful alien currently residing on earth. Who also looked ready to forgo her cutlery and pick up her pancakes messily with her bare hands.

Lena stared at her after she spoke, both watching without words before Kieran spoke again with a pout.

“Yeyu always makes me eat my vegetables,” she mumbled, jabbing viciously at her food and setting Kara’s teeth on edge wondering if she might break the plate at the table with misdirected strength.

Fortunately, she didn’t, and Lena took the words on cue to reply.

“I used to have to make your Yeyu eat her vegetables, you know,” she hummed lightly, Kieran’s stormy pout shifting instantly to interest and leaving Kara slightly dazed at the naturalness of Lena’s tone. “The first time we ever went out to lunch, I thought I’d have to force a piece of lettuce down her throat before her body collapsed into a sugar coma.”

Lena smiled at the last word, her eyebrows waggling manically, making Kieran bad mood vanish and be replaced with the hysterical laughter that only a three-year-old could make. But as much as the sound delighted her, Kara couldn’t look away at the soft expression of Lena’s face as she watched the little girl laugh.

Ever since Kieran was born, Kara had wondered what Lena would be like as a parent. She had no doubts that she would be a good one. After all, Lena was exceptional at everything she set her mind to and had born the brunt of enough terrible parenting to never repeat the same mistakes with her child. But there were little things, and big things, that Kara wondered about. Lena would be there for their child, in every way, but would she ever really settle in her bones that having Kieran was something she'd rather never happened at all? It wasn’t an attitude that Kara would have envied her for. After all, not everyone wants to be a parent and just because you have a child doesn’t mean there won’t always be a part of yourself that wondered how different your life could have been if you hadn’t.

But even if she did want her and loved her and couldn’t imagine life without her, however long that took, would Lena have a way about her that just synced somehow with Kieran? Would they fall into each other’s orbit, each adjusting sometimes messily to the other? Would Kieran mimic her the same way she mimicked Kara? Would there ever be a time when Kieran automatically looked to Lena for comfort, reassurance and guidance but before she could even ask, Lena would offer without hesitation?

Would Kara ever want that to happen?

But no daydreams or worries or plans could ever replace the simple way that Lena and Kieran’s relationship had morphed in a day from suspicion and wariness to the natural comfort of laughter and stories as if Lena had been in Kieran’s life forever. And Kara could see it, a light in Kieran had been lit this morning. As if some innocence and peace had finally returned to her.

And it was Lena who had done it, not Kara.

It made her ecstatic and jealous all at once.

“That is not what happened,” she stuttered out, a queasy feeling in her stomach at her reaction.

Lena’s eyes snapped towards her, her eyes narrowing at Kara’s words. For a brief second, Kara wondered it Lena knew precisely what she had been thinking.

“Of course,” Lena whispered, her eyes boring into Kara’s. “I didn’t know that she needed the calorie intake of fifty humans a day just to stay standing.”

A pang of old guilt, but guilt nonetheless bubbled up, and Kara couldn’t look.

The lie that had started everything.

“But she’s like me,” Kieran uttered, oblivious to the silent passing between Kara and Lena. “Expect for powers. But back then, she had them.”

Lena nodded but didn’t turn to face Kieran when she answered her.

“Yes, she is like you.” The confirmation gentle, but still sending a chill down Kara’s spine. “But I didn’t know that she was for a very long time.”

Kara couldn’t remember if they’d ever really talked about it, not really. Or if the betrayal and pain of it had just been buried in a furious ball, under the mountain of all that came immediately after. It was as if both of them had been split into multiple versions of themselves, and they only inhabited the body that was currently needed to keep moving forward, and all the other damaged and hurt versions were kept for another time when they might be needed again.

“Why?”

Kara winced at the question, knowing that Kieran’s questions were now turned deliberately to provoke a reaction especially when Kara had already explained, as vaguely as she could, why she hadn’t told Lena, which was precisely why she was fishing for Lena’s perspective. One of Kieran’s main frustrations these days was not understanding why everyone didn’t view the world and life the exact way that she did.   

“I think it’s because she was afraid.”

For a second, Kara wondered if she had misheard Lena’s answer. Or at the very least the lack of bitterness.

But then, she thought still locked in Lena’s gaze, who was she to assume what Lena’s thoughts were on anything anymore. Or how she should process.

She remembered the bottles she had collected yesterday and swallowed.

“Why?”

Lena didn’t answer for a second before finally looking away, relief filling Kara unexpectedly.

“I don’t know.”

Kieran didn’t let any silence settle before she turned to Kara with sharp and demanding eyes.

“Why were you afraid?”

Kara frowned at her daughter’s tone. An unfortunate trait that Kieran had been displaying lately was her persistent belief that she was owed answers and things from everybody and that she receive whatever she had demanded promptly and without hesitation.

“Kieran.”

Her daughter scowled at her warning tone, and Kara was instantly reminded of Lena.

Who was sitting right in front of them both.

“Why were you afraid… please?”

The half-hearted attempt at politeness made Kara want to roll her eyes, but she let out a sigh instead. Sitting back in her chair, she eyed her daughter with a steady eye.

“That’s not going to work.”

Her daughter’s contrite expression morphed to a deep scowl in the blink of an eye. Kieran crosse her arms huffily, and her lower lip jutted out alongside her thunderous expression. The start of wary caution grew in Kara, knowing where this was headed.

“You never let me ask anything.” The whine came out high and tight.

Kara shook her head slowly.

“That’s not true,” she replied gently.

“YES, IT IS!”

At the force of Kieran’s shout, a thrum ran through the entire room. All three plates in front of them clattered alongside their cutlery, the energy of it hit Kara and Lena too, both pushed back away a few centimetres. Lena’s face turned ashen instantly, and she stared at her with wide eyes, but Kara had more than enough experience with Kieran’s tantrums to focus on how Lena was responding right now.

Kieran was taking heavy breaths now, her face turning red as if she was ready to cry and launch into a scream. Kara immediately slipped off her chair and knelt in front of her, keeping her face gentle and voice calm.

“Kieran,” she hummed gently. "What did we say about yelling?”

Kieran didn’t look away from her, but Kara could see that the frustration in her eyes was only growing.

“Not to.”

Kara shook her head.

“No…” She answered, still calm in her attempt to deflate the situation. “Just sometimes, when we get mad or frustrated, people yell. But it doesn’t mean that it’s ok to lose your temper, and scream at people.”

For a brief moment, Kara thought she might have broken through to her, but that hoped vanished just as fast when hot and angry tears spilled down Kieran’s cheeks.

“You never listen to me!” Kieran shouted, before jumping off her seat.

“Kieran-“

Kieran shoved past her, misjudging her strength in her anger and sending Kara sprawling backwards and grabbing at the table to retain her balance. Kara winced, practically feeling her spine bruise, but stood up all the same and watched Kieran storming down the corridor and away from her.

At the sound of a door slamming shut, Kara let out a heavy breath and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“What was that?”

Kara ran her hand down her face before she turned and returned the accusatory glare that Lena was giving her.

“Has she been up all night?” Kara growled.

Lena’s look faltered.

“We were talking.”

Kara’s jealousy spiked in her, mixing with the frustration and her terror sitting inside her from the hellish life she had managed to escape from. And now her daughter, who had laughed so freely and delighted with Lena, had practically thrown her aside in a rage. There was panic there too, of what exactly Kieran and Lena had been talking about all night long. So Kara threw up her hands and scoffed at the words, immediately launching into an offensive attack.

“And you had to do that in the middle of the night?”

Lena’s face contorted and anger flickered in her eyes.

“Well, maybe I’m catching up for the three years I didn’t know she existed,” she spat out.

Kara should feel guilty, she did deep down, but now she just wanted to scream. Finally, let out her tension in a way that Kieran had. This was the first time that Kieran’s mood had snapped since they had arrived, but it was enough to make Kara angry too. And Lena was there, and the stress was immense.

“Will that be your trump card forever?” Kara bit back, already hearing the ridiculousness of it considering they had been back a total of two days and Lena had every right to feel whatever she was feeling.

Lena let out a dark bark of laughter, her hand fisting against the table as she stood to her feet.

“Oh, I think I’m entitled to it,” she hissed.

Kara’s lips pulled back in a snarl.

“You think it’s that simple?”

Lena looked around the room, gesturing wildly.

“You’ve hidden her from me all her life.”

Kara closed her eyes, the sudden urge to scream at herself and the world for the fucked-up state she was in right now nearly overtaking her.

“Not out of spite.” Her words rigid.

The instinctual defensiveness was unjust, Kara knew it. There was no way that Lena could understand where it came from because she hadn’t told Lena anything. But there had been a pressure building up since she had returned, since before she had returned really, and Kara didn’t know how to release it anymore.

She was exhausted. Because she couldn’t explain and she couldn’t turn away, and because she could already feel herself wrapped in Lena’s orbit and clinging to her unfairly after she had all but run away.

Lena paused, a return reply unspoken for a few seconds, as her hand fisted on the table tighter and her knuckles turned white. Turning her face away, but not fast enough for Kara to miss the disgusted look in her eyes. Her heart started to pound in her chest, and she could feel the oncoming horrible premonition of doom the same way she always did and tried to internal start a slow count of seconds to calm herself. She took in the raw red skin of Lena’s hands, the tight line of her jaw, and the tremble in her voice when she finally spoke without looking back at her.

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you keep lying.”

Kara deflated, tension leaking from her posture, the exhaustion doubled again, and her head pounded in unison with her heart. One of the endless things that she missed from her old life and powers was not having the ability to get a headache.

She stretched her fingers out, but even though the tension was gone, her heart had been lashed by the words.

“Well, there are certainly things you’re not telling me about your life.”

Lena looked back at her with sharp ferocity.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” She growled.

Kara rolled her eyes, unbelieving that Lena honestly thought that she was stupid enough not to realise something was going on.

“Why is your entire body covered in scars?”

Her words were cold and unflinching, eyes tracking every movement of Lena’s face as it transitioned from shock, pain, anger and grief. Despite her storm of emotions, Kara’s attempt to push aside her worry for Lena fell away.

Now they just seemed to be two people, intent on pushing each other away as far as they could without leaving the other’s side.

“Were you checking me out?” Lena hissed, her eyes tracking Kara’s form with distaste.

Kara resisted the sudden urge to through a plate at Lena’s head. After all, she should try to retain some sense of dignity to separate her behaviour from that of a three-year-old.

“Don’t get snide,” Kara hissed, jutting her head defiantly. “You answered the door without pants on, remember? And then I had to put you to bed in front of Kieran.”

Lena fist loosened and relaxed, and she stepped back from the table. Watching her for a few long seconds, the panic that had wrapped itself around her heart in her the midst of her forgotten counting squeezed.

“She’s seen worse in her life.”

Kara’s eyes widened, but she tried not to let too much panic show on her face.

“What would you know about it?” She demanded.

Lena stared at her intently, the dryness in Kara’s throat increased, before Lena shook her head and turned as if she couldn’t bear to look at her.

“Nothing,” she whispered emptily. “Nothing at all.”

Without a word, Lena started to clear their plates, stacking and carrying them to the kitchen silently as if there was nothing left to say. Kara felt her whole body begin to shake now, vibrating with a need to demand more answers. Because the act of physically holding in all the memories of every single day since she left was making her sick. And because she was about ready to collapse on the floor from exhaustion.

She couldn’t even remember the last day that she hadn’t questioned herself as a parent.

That last thought did it, and her jaw clenched with anger. Following Lena quickly, she shouted at her back.

“I’m her mother!”

Lena slammed the plates down so hard on the counter that Kara swore she heard them shatter before Lena whipped around with a face full of more grief then Kara had ever seen on it before.

“And what am I?” Lena’s voice cracked, with tears in her eyes. “Do you know? Because I sure as hell don’t yet.”

Kara’s eyes filled with moisture too, but instead of allowing them to fall, she covered her face with her hand and took a trembling breath.

“I’ve spent every second since I found out I was pregnant trying to keep her safe,” she choked out tearfully. “Every second.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

Everything ugly that had led her to start the argument vanished in the blink of an eye when Kara lowered her hand and took in Lena’s red face and trembling lips. More regret filled her, and through the paranoid fog that clouded everything she did these days, she finally remembered that there was nothing she wanted more in her life then Kieran to be safe.

And for her to have a relationship with Lena.

But that wasn’t her choice to make.

“Lena,” she breathed. “You’re whatever you want to be. I’m not going to tell you what you want to be.”

Lena bit her lip, and her eyes grew distant, the fire soft and terrified all at once.

“And how is this going to work?” Lena stared through her, talking to herself more than Kara. “She’s… so different.”

There was a mixture of fear and fascination in her voice, but Kara tried not to let her hope drown it and kept her mouth firmly shut.

Lena’s eyes refocused on her then, and there was no malice in them. No anger or blame, just grief.

Grief and pain.

“You’re both running from something so bad that neither of you can tell me about it,” she said softly, almost without a sound at all. “How do you see this working? We’re not together. I’m… You’re… Kara, what are we supposed to do?”

Guilt was strangling. That was the one thing that Kara knew for sure. Guilt at lives not lived, and things not said and everything that she had put everyone she loved in her life through because she was chasing a cure for the part of herself that had been torn off. And she didn’t know if it was worth it at the time, but she knew far better now. Some promises and deals were never worth it, especially if the devil was the one brokering them. In the end, it had been her that had risked everything and barely came out the other side slightly intact.

Lena had been a victim of her choices through all of this when she had only ever offered her help and love despite all the bullshit and lies. And still, she was here. Letting Kara into her home when it was the last thing that she had to do.

In her weak moments, flashes of anger protected Kara from the pain. Were she to relive her life, she would have tried to summon more strength. More strength to tell Lena the truth. More strength to live through the loss of her powers and everything that Lex had done to her. More strength to never leave. More strength to turn back once she did. More strength to escape when she realised exactly what the people who had promised to help her were planning to do.

She had failed herself, Kieran and Lena too, which was why she couldn’t explain everything to Lena now. Or wedge herself into Lena’s heart anymore then she knew she had. She had never understood before why love must be free, but she did now. The need for it would warp natures of people and change itself into something it should never be. And while Lena deserved all the love in the world, and certainly deserved it from Kieran, she didn’t deserve to deal with it from Kara.

She couldn’t say she loved her, when all her love did was hurt Lena. And Lena loving her hurt her even more. Kara still had so much to work on within herself and all her brokenness. She was learning to unlearn things that had been taught. To watch for that flash of darkness and strive to be better. Because her anger wasn’t strength, it was just a flash of fire to cover her weakness.

And Kieran was the one she had failed the most. By the life she’d had to live, and allowing her to exist so long without knowing Lena.

There was so much she couldn’t say without the right words.

“Right now,” Kara answered instead. “The only thing I can afford to think about is making sure that she’s safe.”

Lena looked at her as if she were mad.

“And that’s how you justify making her lie to me?” Her voice shrill now. “Hiding things isn’t going to make me trust you.”

Kara resisted the urge to groan. Kieran had learned early not to repeat things to people, or talk at all beyond stuff she knew was safe to discuss. She was wary by nature, which was, unfortunately, something Kara had to encourage to keep them both safe, but being in the presence of another adult that she had easily slipped into trust with had probably loosened her walls. Kara prayed that the things she had said weren’t too damaging at this point.

“Lena, anything that she told you-“

Lena cut her off with an agitated yell.

“It wasn’t what she told me; it’s what she did!”

Before Kara could question it, Lena ripped the shirt off her head, exposing her tightly muscled body. But Kara’s focus quickly shifted when Lena stepped closer and started to point to spots on her skin where Kara had seen scars and faded marks not two days ago. Some now vanished completely, the skin smoothed back to health where it had been mangled. Others were now thin, silver-white lines, the sight of which made Kara’s face go pale.

“You see this? And this!?” Lena nearly screeched, pointing at every spot. “A three-year-old, impossible child, managed to heal me-“

“She did this?” Kara demanded with panicked eyes, fear flooding her entire body.

“Oh don’t pretend like you didn’t-“

Kara turned and ran.

“Kieran!” She shouted, terrified.

Lena followed half a step behind her, asking something, but her words just buzzed in Kara’s ears.

She threw open the bedroom door, scanning before moving onto the office and all but kicked it down when the door jammed. Throwing her shoulder into it, Kara’s eyes settled on Kieran’s prone body, lying on the floor with splayed chess pieces surrounding her. Falling to her knees beside her, Kara’s eyes darted over her daughter’s sweaty face, and pressed her hand to neck searching for a pulse and finding it rapid.

“Kieran?” She pinched her daughter’s skin lightly for a response, panicked but still relieved to hear shallow breaths. “Kieran, can you hear me?”

Her daughter didn’t respond, and she looked up to yell at Lena.

“We need to take her to the DEO now!”

They couldn’t go to the hospital. She didn’t want to go to the DEO, but they couldn’t go to the hospital. If they went to a hospital, people would find out about her, and if they found out about her, then they would find them both.

Lena’s face was pale and shocked.

“What’s-“

“Lena, she’s dying!” Kara cut her off with a scream.

Suddenly, Lena’s face morphed to certainty, and she knelt on the floor, picking Kieran up quickly in her arms.

“It’s too far.” She held her cradled to her chest, walking past Kara quickly. “She won’t make it there.”

Kara felt tears spring in her eyes at the words. She couldn’t believe them. Ready to scream that it couldn’t be true, her words were stopped when Lena turned right instead of left down the corridor and walked towards the dead end. Thinking she had taken leave of her senses, Kara grabbed at Lena’s elbow, but the other woman shook her off. Stopping in front of the wall, Lena stood stock still and staring.

“What are you…”

Kara’s mouth gapped at the sudden hiss, the wall panel sliding away to reveal a room that was easily half the size of the rest of the apartment. It looked like a mixture between a lab and an armoury, a whole wall racked with weaponry and another with medical equipment and broken down gadgets. Other strange equipment that Kara didn’t recognise scattered the room, and in the centre was a medical gurney. It was essentially, a miniature version of Lena’s lab at L-Corp minus the mouldy food, but it was the black and red-trimmed glider and an armoured suit that made Kara’s mouth click closed.

Her eyes flashed back to Lena who was lowering Kieran on the gurney, tracing the lines of her strong muscled back when it finally clicked.

But she didn’t have time to process that Lena was the vigilante that now stalked the nights of National City.

Rushing on the other side of Kieran, Lena typed something rapidly into a tablet, a blue light filling the room.

“Vera! Scan her, now!” Lena shouted.

The blue light shifted, scanning the length of Kieran’s small body as tears started to run down Kara’s cheeks.

“Her body’s going into shock,” an electronic female voice rang out. “Breathing has stopped. Massive cardiac arrest is imminent.”

Kara felt like she was going to hyperventilate, not used to willingly giving up control of Kieran’s fate. Lena, on the other hand, let out a growl of frustration and furiously started chest compressions.

“Defibrillate!”

“No good, boss,” the voice answered. “Chances of survival-“

“I don’t give a fuck!” Lena screamed, her eyes frantic as Kara continued to cry, feeling useless. “DEFIBRILLATE NOW!”

A panel slid open next to the gurney table, revealing a charge machine. Without a pause, Lena ripped Kieran’s shirt open with her bare hands and reached for it. Kara took over CPR without a word, using every inch of her strength to try and match Lena’s on Kieran’s alien body.

“The shock will need to be high,” Lena muttered rapidly. “High as you can. Otherwise, it won’t work.”

The lights in the room started to flicker, but Kara kept her concentration on what she was doing — trying to drown out the knowledge that Kieran wasn’t breathing. Lena stuck the pads on Kieran’s body around Kara’s working hands.

“Shockable rhythm, boss,” the voice sounded.

“Deliver a shock of one-thousand Jules.”

Kara’s eyes widened, and she glanced up at Lena’s grim face. Swallowing every instinct she had, Kara kept administering CPR.

“Boss, a thousand Jules will-“

“JUST DO IT!”

“Charging.”

“Kara,” Lena cut in. “Clear the patient.”

Kara stepped back instantly, and a few seconds later, the room’s lights flickered again while the shock was administered.

“Unresponsive.”

Kara covered her hand with her mouth.

It couldn’t be real. It wasn’t real.

“Charge again,” Lena demanded, overtaking CPR once more.

“Boss-“

“CHARGE AGAIN!”

“Boss, she doesn’t have a shockable rhythm,” the voice cut over, louder. “She’s pulseless.”

“No!” Kara gasped, pushing Lena away and used all her might to try and restart her daughter’s heart with her hands.

Within a second, Lena ran to another table in the room, typing a code into a drawer and pulled out a vial of black liquid. The needle was kryptonite green, and the colour of the fluid sent a chill down Kara’s spine.

Harun-El

“Boss, you can’t-“

“I can,” Lena growl, filling up a syringe with it before she pushed Kara off Kieran and raised it over her small chest to inject it.

“Lena, what are you doing!”

“Kara, I don’t have time-“

“Tell me what you’re doing to my daughter!”

“I’m giving her a solution of refined Harun-El,” Lena rattled, giving her an imploring look while her hand hovered. “It’ll save her.”

Kara paled even further.

“Lena-“

“Trust me.”

Trust didn’t come easily to Kara anymore. It didn’t come at all when it came to Kieran.

But she trusted Lena.

Kara stepped back.

“Ok.”

Without a word, Lena plunged the needle into Kieran’s chest and injected every drop.

Pulling it out, Kara waited breathlessly for a few seconds before faded black rivulets ran under Kieran’s skin from her heart, and there was a rise to her chest, indicating her first breath.

“Heart rate returning to normal, boss.”

Kara’s emotions boiled over now, and her tears followed readily, leaning over Kieran, she clung to her and kissed her forehead. She didn’t even jump when Lena’s hand touched her back.

“She’s ok,” Lena murmured, relief obvious in her voice.

Kara let out a tearful laugh. The madness of her life and Lena’s overtaking her. Her she was, cradling her daughter’s body, resuscitated by a version of a poison that had killed her friend, and she guessed Lena was using as Outlier.

Outlier, the elusive vigilante that Kara knew nothing about beyond what Alex had told her yesterday, which was that nobody knew who she was beyond a dark spectre that half the city was terrified of.

She stood up and looked at Lena, taking in her body and the now thin scars, their origin explained now. In a way, it made so much sense for it to be her, but at the same time, Kara struggled to imagine it. That version of who she thought Lena was rattled in her mind, and it was hard to dislodge as much as she tried. The evasive thing that she knew Lena wasn’t telling her now laid bare.

And Lena just stared at her with that fire in her eyes.

“What happened?”

Kara swallowed at the question, looking back down at Kieran and the colour that was returning to her face.

“She can’t heal people…” Kara answered cagily, walking amongst landmines in her explanation. “If she does.. it drains her. It takes the injuries from others and attacks her within.”

A memory of a year ago, the last time that Kieran had tried to heal a broken bone in Kara’s arm, sent her to the infirmary for a week to recover.

“She isn’t strong enough,” Kara whispered, stroking Kieran’s hair gently.

Lena flinched at her words, stepping back.

“What is she?”

Kara’s face twisted at the words, her hackles rising.

“What are you?” She spat back at the offensive words.

Kieran was a person. Not a thing.

“I guess this explains the scars,” she finished acidly.

Lena scoffed, but she looked rattled.

“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” she replied unsteadily, her face growing even paler then Kieran’s had been minutes before. “I’m not the one that hid the existence of a child.”

Kara ground her teeth, gesturing around the room.

“No, you’re Outlier.”

Lena looked away from her for a long minute, before looking back with a cold face and darkened eyes.

“She’s not cured yet.” Lena turned to type rapidly on her tablet once again. “It’ll take some time for her body to recover, and I need to run more tests. And I can’t do that all here. Not by myself.”

Lena gave her a dismissive glance, looking her up and down.

“Especially considering you’re probably going to continue to lie, or hide or whatever you want to call it.”

It hurt. It hurt so much because she felt so weak and out of control. The tiny piece of herself that she tried to use as a shield vanished and all that was left was the nothing that she had become. Unable to care for herself, her daughter or anyone else.

She didn’t want it to be true, and because it was, she hurt all the more. A part of Kara wanted nothing more than to tell Lena everything. She wanted to spill it all on the table. But she couldn’t because it was more than just herself now. And if she revealed the truth of it all, Lena would hate her even more then she did now.

And Kara couldn’t handle that.

Her heart started to pound; her palms began to sweat. She could feel the panic rising, but the numbers she usually counted became jumbled.

“There are people after us,” she choked. “Powerful people. Who know about her, and know about me. The me I used to be.”

Lena’s fists tightened on her tablet until her knuckles turned white.

“Is that why you’re so frightened?” She demanded, gesturing to Kieran’s prone form. “It still doesn’t explain why you’re not telling me the truth, that you didn’t tell me that Kieran can heal people. Or that for some reason the PROCESS OF DOING SO ALMOST KILLS HER!”

The shout cracked the thin veneer; Kara’s hands started to tremble. Suddenly, she was hot and sweaty, so warm and sweaty that she wanted to strip off her clothes and dive into cold water. But the hand trembling travelled down into her arms and legs, leaving her unsteady on my feet. Her heart seemed to pound even faster, even harder. She tried taking a deep breath to calm herself, but the puffs were sharp and shallow. Kara’s vision got darker and narrower and looked kaleidoscopic, like when she closed your eyes and press down on your eyelids to see the stars of Krypton in her mind.

“I promise…. I promise that I’ll tell you everything,” she cried, stumbling backwards and wheeling, unable to look at anything in the room anymore without it turning.

Her ears were ringing, and she couldn’t hear.

“I promise that I’ll tell you everything,” she continued, sinking to the floor, losing time already. “But not… not… Is she going to be ok?”

It was all she could say before she lost herself entirely — overwhelmed by years, the same as every time before it. Her mind filled with all the imaged of things she tried to repress.

Lex pulling her entire mind apart, then the compound doing it again.

Kieran, dying again, and again, and again, and Lena shouting at her because she had ruined it all.

“Kara.” A voice cut in and over the din, and it was only then that she realised she had nearly curled into a ball on the ground.

But the voice was so soft, so sweet, that even under the weight of it all Kara managed to follow it and lookup. Focusing on Lena’s beautiful, gentle green eyes. The other woman was sitting next to her now, so close without touching. There but no overwhelming.

“Kara… hey… Deep breaths,” Lena instructed calmly.

Kara tried to do as she was bid, feeling for the ground beneath her and trying to regain some control of her senses. Feeling the cold metal pressed to her skin, she kept her eyes on Lena’s face and started to count deep breaths slowly.

“I’m sorry… I’m so sorry, Lena,” she managed to get out between pauses, but Lena just shook away her words.

"You can get through this,” Lena answered calmly. “Tell me what you need now.”

Kara’s eyes darted up to the gurney, her heart in her throat seeing Kieran lying so still.

“I… I…”

"Concentrate on your breathing,” Lena’s voice pulled her back. “Stay in the present. What you are feeling is scary, but it’s not dangerous. Do you want to leave this room?”

Kara’s eyes widened, and she shook her head violently.

“No!” She cried. “No, I can’t leave her.”

“It’s ok; it’s ok... “ Lena answered, slow and gentle. “You don’t have to leave her. She’s not going anywhere. You’re not going anywhere. Just take a few breaths with me.”

The kindness of it clicked with her, along with the in-depth-rooted knowledge that she was once more totally undeserving of it. With that final click, she burst into tears and started to sob in earnest. Folding into herself, she couldn’t stop from falling into Lena’s arms.

Half a second later, Lena wrapped them around her gently and started to whisper sweet nothings in her ear while Kara drenched her shirt with tears.

“I’m so sorry,” she cried with agony into Lena’s neck.

Lena shushed her, stroking her hair as she rocked her gently while they sat on the floor.

“I’m going to look after you… Both of you,” Lena whispered back in a cracked voice. “I promise.”

Chapter Text

Kara hummed soft Kryptonian lullabies as she lay beside Kieran, gently stroking her hair and trying mostly to stop her arms from shaking.

It had taken Lena nearly fifteen minutes to help her calm down this morning, and after Kara’s panic died and she managed to stand to her own feet, she was unable to look Lena in the eyes. She felt Lena’s eyes on her the entire time but focused her attention on Kieran when Lena tentatively, and somewhat reluctantly, suggested that they should call Alex. Lena needed a second opinion on Kieran’s condition. And the now revitalised paranoid part of Kara’s brain suspected that while Alex was the logical choice for multiple reasons, Lena would probably try to pump her for any information that Kara had told her sister yesterday.

Still, she wasn’t going to stop her sister from helping Kieran.

Alex had arrived quickly after Lena had called and explained the situation, Kara listening vaguely to the phone call as she sat rigid on the stool she had dragged next to the gurney where Kieran still lay, thankfully looking better by the minute. There was so much running through her mind, that memories and fears and questions just spun in an incomprehensible blur.

There was a reason that Kara had forbidden Kieran from using her healing powers. Usually, it wasn’t an issue personally, considering it was only something she ever wanted to do for people she liked. And considering the only person she liked for years had been Kara, she was safe. And the compound hadn’t seemed overly interested it yet, the cost of losing a resource like Kieran to her gifts was not something they considered worthwhile, even if it saved a life.

But then they had come here, and Kara had been stupid enough to think that the old ways and rules by which they had both lived their lives wouldn’t apply here too. Lena wasn’t some mysterious and mistrustful faceless man or guard; she was a person that looked precisely like Kieran and clearly connected with her. All her life Kieran had been asking questions about who Lena was, and what she was like, and there since they had arrived Kieran had been drawn to Lena in a way that Kara never thought she would be. But Kieran was too small and too young to understand her limitations. This wasn’t the first time that she had been drained like this, though this indeed was the worst. Which meant that Kieran must have healed Lena from some severely debilitating wounds last night.

And that was a whole other tailspin of information.

Of course, it all made sense now. Lena’s caginess, her withdrawal from society, the state of her lab and the things in it that Kara could see weren’t for public consumption. The bruises, the scars, the everything.

But even though it explained things, it didn’t explain why. Kara could guess, but it wasn’t easy to understand. She didn’t know enough about Outlier to start with but felt a sudden urge to research the vigilante studiously beyond the dark rumours that had reached her, even in the compound. But why was Lena out in the city, risking her life?

Maybe that line of thought was hypocritical, but she couldn’t stop the way her heart filled her throat when she imagined the millions of ways Lena had brushed with death over the years.

But then again, she had been brushing with death her entire life. 

Alex had arrived quickly after the phone call, looking around the armoury….lab… lair without a single change in expression, before shrugging off her coat and proceeding to conduct every possible test she could on Kieran with the equipment Lena had available. Kara had remained mute by her daughter's side, even while Lena fell into a somewhat natural tandem with Alex. Both of them rattling off terms and percentages and numbers until Kara had zoned out of reality and back into the same swirling cesspool that was her mind.

Alex had to call her name four times before Kara had registered that she was being talked to.

After being reassured that she could move her, Kara had carried Kieran still sleeping back to Lena’s bedroom and lay down with her. The position she was still in now, fifteen minutes later, half because she had little desire to leave Kieran’s side and half because she didn’t want to face questions from Alex or Lena about all the things she still couldn’t tell either of them yet.

But she certainly couldn’t hide in here forever, as much as she wanted to. Finally, pressing a kiss to Kieran’s forehead, she slipped out of the room and closed the door behind her gently. Glancing down the corridor, she noticed with a sharp relief that the panel had closed once more and the entrance to Lena’s… lair… had smoothed back into an undetectable, typical, wall. She padded in the direction of the living room instead, cautiously hovering at the sight of Alex and Lena at the kitchen counter, Lena passing a beer over to Alex before taking a sip of her own. For two seconds, Kara’s brain skipped with the thought that Alex and Lena both looked like members of the same band, with their almost matching leather jackets and combat boots.

Lena’s style changes since she left would no doubt keep her brain sharp while she reconciled with the idea that she had become even more attracted to Lena. Something she had once thought was impossible.

Lena looked up at her arrival, her steady eyes sending a rush of heat to Kara’s cheek as she remembered with embarrassment the way that Lena had nursed her through a panic attack earlier.

“How is she?”

Kara looked at Alex to ease the embarrassment but only felt guiltier under her sister’s eyes.

Rao, she had probably ruined her life too with all this horror.

“She seems… stable.”

A few lines of tension vanished from Lena’s face as she nodded.

“Good”

Kara continued to hover, unsure what to do when Alex pulled a long draught of her drink and watched Lena with a hard eye.

“So…. you’re Outlier?”

To Kara’s ear, Alex’s words hadn’t been in the least antagonistic, but Lena’s grip on her drink tightened and her mouth set in a hard line.

“I’m pleading the fifth.”

Alex let out a long sigh, looking as exhausted as Kara felt.

“Lena, what are you doing?” She asked with a shake of her head.

Kara’s eyes flickered to Lena, waiting for the answer too even though she remained silent.

“Justice,” she answered, shrugging. “Justice for this city.”

Alex didn’t look overly impressed by her words.

“You’re not talking about justice; you’re talking about revenge,” she answered. “Revenge for what, I can only guess.”

It was quick, but Lena’s eyes flickered to Kara before setting hard once more.

“Sometimes they’re the same,” she answered stonily, seeming far off being thick emotional walls.

“No, justice is about harmony; revenge is about making yourself feel better.” Her sister didn’t answer in a way that Lena liked, scoffing at Alex’s words.

Alex took a breath, but her tone didn’t cloud with anger.

“Which is why we have an impartial system.”

“Oh, your system is broken.” Lena waved her off dismissively.

Alex’s fist tightened on the bench, and with white knuckles, she stepped away and walked towards the windows of the living room.

“You care about justice? Look beyond your own pain, Lena,” she gestured out the window. “This city is rotting. Things are worse than ever down here. Everyone tries to pretend that the impact of losing Supergirl never happened, but our streets are flooded with crime and drugs, praying on the desperate spawning more of the same every day.”

Kara felt the words drop stones in her heart, pained at the state of National City. And ashamed of herself for not giving it serious thought in years. Once, she had lived with every fibre of her being determined to keep this city safe, but the message of hope she had tried to inspire in its people had vanished the instant that she had ‘died’. And now there was Lena, trying to do something about it.

“And the DEO?” Alex continued with a frayed voice. “We can’t do anything. We’re scrambling beyond our jurisdiction when aliens’ crimes leak into humans’, and struggling to catch up when the opposite happens.”

Alex looked exhausted and tarried even speaking her own words, but Kara could see that this was a source of great frustration for her.

“Our new esteemed President was only voted in on the back of the corruption of our last, and their mandate has been very firm on all agencies remaining in their purview. And none of the others trusts us anymore. We’re the agency that allowed Supergirl to die.”

Another lie, of course. This time to protect Kara’s secret identity. Given the government’s track run, when she’d had her powers stolen from her, everyone had seen it best not to reveal the truth about Kara’s identity or her real state. If the government knew that she was still alive, they might do their best to study her in any way they could. After all, they’d never had a chance before with a Kryptonian, and while she couldn’t do anything remotely superpower related, she was still an alien.

“You really want to stretch thin the limited influence we have left chasing a vigilante through the streets?”

Lena stepped out from the kitchen as well, and Kara blinked at how close she stood beside her. Not questioning it out loud, she remained silent and continued to watch the ongoing conversation.

“But you haven’t been thus far,” Lena answered with a snort. “As you said, I don’t fall in your purview. Too much human crime for the DEO, and too much alien for the FBI. All I have to worry about is the police, and given the way this city has spiralled under their leadership… well.”

Kara frowned, her eyes flickering between Alex as she ground her jaw and Lena, who while standing with a confident tilt in her spine, was vibrating with pent up energy.

“As I’m sure was your intention when you started all this.”

Lena let out an exasperated noise at Alex’s acid words.

“Contrary to your belief on my motivations, at least I’m trying to help this city,” Lena sounded back, anger colouring her words. “Instead of letting myself get drowned in red tape by idiotic higher-ups who are more concerned with building power than helping the people they are supposed to represent.”

Alex let out a low keening frustrated noise, and Kara wondered why the world had decided to cruel to all of them. Her sister’s eyes, red-rimmed with exhaustion, now looked at Lena with feral desperation.

“This isn’t about politics!” She hissed, probably still conscious of Kieran in the bedroom. “What gives you the right to elect yourself judge, jury and executioner? People have died.”

Kara’s eyes turned from her sister to look at Lena. The hard way her jaw sat, the tightness of her back, and she couldn’t help but think of the rumours about Outlier she had heard. Probably exaggerated by distance and time, but if they had managed to filter through to her part of the world, let alone into the compound, surely there must be an element of truth to them. Outlier was hard, silent and ruthless in her punishments. She didn’t appear to seek death, but it certainly surrounded her in a way that vigilante work attracted. But there was fear in the rumours too — fear of retribution and Outlier’s nameless dismantling of criminals.

But that was just the surface. So much lay beneath, and Kara felt a hand tighten around her heart when an ugly silence descended between Alex and Lena.

“I shouldn’t be here,” she said softly, drawing the other two women’s attention.

For a second, there was a spark of fear in Lena’s eyes until she seemed to realise that Kara’s intention was merely to go back to the bedroom instead of leaving altogether.

“No,” Lena answered her instantly. “Don’t leave. This is your home now too. You have a right to be here.”

Kara faltered under Lena’s earnest eyes, feeling weak and touched all at once. She was trying in the midst of it all to understand Lena’s pain, but she didn’t think she was succeeding all too well. She was trying to understand her mindset. This back and forth between them, full of discord and toxic mixed emotions was overwhelming. But under Lena’s gaze, all Kara could think of was the way that she had held her so close this morning. And the whispered reassurances that she would protect both her and Kieran.

So she stayed, and Lena’s eyes filled with something warmer before turning hard as she looked back to Alex.

“If you want me to stop, arrest me.” Lena’s words were cold. “Otherwise, leave.”

Alex’s mouth twisted and her eyebrows furrowed. For a few silent seconds, she and Lena stared at each other, and Kara found herself holding her breath.

“If this is Kara’s home too,” Alex finally eased out, her gaze shifting to her now. “Doesn’t she get a say in that?”

Kara swallowed under her sister’s eyes, but couldn’t speak to answer. There was another long pause before she heard Lena let out a soft sound of annoyance.

“I’m going to check on Kieran,” she muttered under her breath, before stalking away from them both and down the hall.

Kara let out her breath only when she heard the door close behind her, nearly bowled over when Alex stepped forward and wrapped her in a tight and comforting hug. Kara relaxed into it automatically, breathing in her sister’s smell like it was a drug.

In the sea of things that she had missed since she had been gone, Alex reigned supreme. Sometimes even above Lena herself. There wasn’t any uncertainty with Alex, or confusion. And where thinking of the relationship between her and Lena was often painful, Alex was always comforting. Of course, her sister had known she was leaving, Alex was the only person that she had told, and she hadn’t tried to stop Kara from going.

And while Lena seemed to understand Kara’s pain more viscerally than anyone else, Alex understood Kara better than anyone in the world. Their conversation yesterday hadn’t been enough time to make up for the years they had spent apart. Alex had accepted her daughter, and her peculiar origin, without concern. Kara seeing in her eyes a natural joy when she looked at the girl. Kieran, of course, had been wary of this new person that Kara had been telling her about all her life. But Alex hadn’t pushed Kieran for conversation beyond the short words she offered freely. Kara had wondered if Alex would be angry with her for her long absence, but she’d only been glad to see her. Kara would have to be blind not to read the mixed relief and worry when they talked, Alex filling up the majority of the conversation informing Kara of everything that had been happening since she had left. Kara hadn’t said much, beyond the vague allusions, and she knew that it must have rankled Alex at least a little bit that she was so secretive.

But Alex had changed too since she had left. Not as obviously as Lena, but there was a new easiness about her. Her empathetic nature not lined with as much prickly stubbornness as before.  And it relieved and pained Kara to hear that Alex seemed to be still moving forward in her life, without her presence.

Kara had asked, of course, about what had happened to Lena since she left and Alex had been honest enough to tell her the little information she did know.

The information had been less than comforting.

Kara tightened her grip on Alex, her anxieties desperate for the comfort. With the mountain of urgent problems that never seemed to go away bearing down on her, and the near loss of Kieran this morning, Kara had never been more grateful to have her sister in her life.

Alex pulled away from the hug first, Kara attempted to hide the shine of tears in her eyes.

She waited until Kara had regained her composure before speaking in a gentle voice.

“Kara, I care about Lena,” Alex said steadily and gently, worry in her eyes. “We talked about this yesterday. These past few years she’s… she’s been through hell. But this is… If you don’t feel safe here-“

Kara frowned, feeling defensive.

“Why wouldn’t I feel safe here?”

Alex gave her a sympathetic look, but it only made Kara’s frown deepen.

“Kara, this goes way beyond just self-destructive behaviour,” she answered. “I’m going to do everything that I can to help her if I can. But I need you to be safe. You and my niece.”

Kara was touched that her sister was so protective of her and Kieran, but then she had always been that way. But she still shook her head in defiance.

“Lena would never hurt me.”

That was something she knew deep in her bones and without a shred of doubt. Kara knew it before she had even shown up of Lena’s doorstep, and every action that Lena had taken since had done nothing but confirmed the knowledge in her mind. The memory of Lena cradling her this morning flashed in her mind again, and she struggled not to flush with shame.

Alex let out a heavy breath, the sympathy in her eyes growing, and Kara felt her hackles rise at the idea that she was viewed with pity.

She wasn’t some lovestruck teenager who flung around the safety of herself and her daughter. Kara knew that she was exactly where she needed to be.

“You’re running from something,” Alex answered, cutting Kara off with a hand wave when she tried to speak. “I know you don’t want to tell me, but surely the last thing you need to do is make yourself more of a target.”

Kara’s frown faltered.

“If people, the government or everyone she’s pissed off, find out she’s Outlier,” her sister continued. “You’ll be in the crossfire. And if hiding’s what you want, living in the home of one of the richest people in National City, no matter how much she’s given away, is not the best way to retain anonymity.”

Alex’s words made Kara look down at her feet, mulling them over in her mind.

“The press has been desperate for scraps ever since she withdrew from the face of her company, and from basically the world,” Alex pressed in. “You think they won’t be asking questions when it leaks that Lena Luthor now has a woman and a child living with her?”

Kara’s jaw worked for a few seconds in silence.

What Alex said was perfectly true, and like an idiot, Kara hadn’t considered it properly before she had come here, exactly how high her profile being with Lena would be. But, there were advantages to that too.

“I need Kieran to be safe,” she insisted, the one desire of that would always remain paramount in her mind. “I came back to National City because the people I trust most in the world live here.”

She looked up to Alex’s face, meaning every word.

“I’m under no illusions that these… people are probably going to find me.”

Kara shivered violently for a second, before shaking it off as best she could.

“It might be in our best interest to be in the public eye,” Kara continued. “It’ll make it more difficult to…”

Her words trailed off as her eyes zoned out into painful memories. Trying to stop herself from heading down that pathway again, she refocused on the steadiness of Alex’s eyes.

“I don’t know why Lena is doing what she’s doing, beyond what she’s said,” Kara whispered. “But I do know that regardless of anything else, Lena has a right to get to know her daughter. I’ve denied her that for too long.”

And today she had almost died, in front of them both before Lena had a chance with Kieran.

She closed her eyes and tried to stop her heart from pounding again.

Alex observed her for a few minutes before reaching out to take her hand and gave it a short squeeze.

“What happened to you, Kara?” She whispered desperately. “What are you running from? You can trust me.”

Kara felt pained, the same way she’d been with Lena. Like she was betraying them all over again. But she wasn’t hiding the truth for just her sake, though there were undoubtedly things she struggled to talk about. This was about Kieran. Protecting her was the only thing that mattered.

“It’s not because I don’t trust you, Alex. It’s just…”

How could she explain without explaining?

Alex sighed at her words, her eyes drifting to the corridor and the direction that Lena had vanished down.3

“She’s loved you from the minute she met you; you do know that, right?”

Kara flushed, darting her gaze away when Alex looked back at her. Of course, she knew that Lena loved her. That was why this was all so painful. Lena loved her and Kara loved Lena, but she couldn’t tell her that. She didn’t have a right to tell her, and Lena deserved so much better than a person who had hurt her so much and was still unable, to be honest with her.

“I’ve spent the past few years doing my best to be here for Lena, which was hard considering how you leaving affected her.” Alex placed a hand on her heart, struggling with memories. “I’ve barely been able to see her. I don’t know what you being near her will do.”

Kara rubbed her temple, feeling another guilt headache incoming and looked down to the floor.

“That’s…”

She couldn’t finish it, and Alex knew it.

“She loves you, Kara.”

Kara bit her lip to stop it from shuddering, tears pooling in her eyes and falling down her cheeks.

“Should we both just bury the past?” Kara croaked, looking back up at Alex with reddening eyes.

Alex smiled softly at her.

“I wouldn’t presume to tell either of you what to do with your past's,” she answered. “Just know there are those of us, who still care about what you do with your future’s.”

Kara let out a teary laugh, feeling overwhelmed again by the kindness she knew she hadn’t earned.

“You haven’t given up on me yet?”

Alex pulled into another hug.

“Never.”

Kara couldn’t stop her mouth from falling open after the Mentor told her the news.

“That’s impossible.”

The other woman didn’t seem to think so.

“False negatives can happen, but false positives are rare.”

Kara shook her head rapidly, knowing that there must be another explanation.

“No, I mean it’s quite literally impossible,” she answered. “The only person I slept with… it’s impossible.”

The Mentor titled her head, reminding Kara of a curious bird inspecting their dinner.

“This news surprises you?”

Kara scoffed, wide-eyed as panic set in.

“Yes, the improbability of it does surprise me!”

Her shrill voice sounded through the small room, but the Mentor seemed unphased by the discovery.

“It is no problem for us.”

In another life, Kara would have praised the woman’s forward and accepting thinking when it came to recruits implausible and unlikely pregnancies, but unless she had been struck with immaculate conception the possibility that she was pregnant was highly ridiculous.

“I don’t even know what to think,” she answered, trying to rationalise the news as best she could.

Kara had come here, following the trail of clues left after the anonymous invitation she had received in National City. Something that she had kept hidden from Alex and Lena. It had been nothing but a year of tests of trials and sleepless nights of Lena trying to fix her, and Kara only felt more broken than when she Alex had carried her half-dead, from the hole that Lex had tortured her in.

She had given up hope of life, of feeling, of recovering… and the more she rotted, rootless and purposeless, the more she felt like giving up on it all and finally easing the burden that her very existence placed on those left around her. Lena had only felt guilty, working herself haggard every single day that she tried and failed to come up with a new solution. Alex just increased her attempts to help Kara rejoin reality, but it had all failed.

Nothing could bring her back to what she was, and her staying in National City was only destroying more lives of the people she loved.

Lena hadn’t been able to fix her, and Kara had given up hope she ever would. But continued with the endless tests and failures for the other woman’s sake. Kara had been ready to leave National City anyway, needing an escape from all the ghosts and pain and that was when they had found her — offering her a chance, a desperate, thin chance of regaining her powers. They spoke of a place where the impossible became possible, where broken people could rise more potent than ever and where miracles happened.

Magic and science combined.

Kara had been enthralled and desperate.

“You came to us for help,” the Mentor continued, her usual businesslike tone unfaltering. “We can help you through this as well.”

It had been a hard road to get here. Taking the money that Alex had offered, she followed the trail to London, then Estonia, then Turkey and then finally, Nepal. They called it a Trial of Wills, a test to see if she was truly worthy of a better path.

Whatever that had meant.

They called it just the compound, no other name for it or whoever they were. A place of cold and ice. She found them here, deep in the mountains. Or rather, they had found her collapsed at their doorstep. It had been a week before she had recovered from her travels, wrapped in blankets in a small room until her fever broke before she had been allowed to see the person who had offered her some hope. And now she was here, being told that they had discovered she was pregnant.

Which was quite impossible, because the only person she had slept with had been Lena.

It was impossible.

“I came to you because you said you could give me back my powers,” Kara finally answered, her gaze turned down to her navel, trying to imagine the possibility that it could be true.

A baby.

“No,” the mentor said bluntly. “You came because you sought a purpose.”

Kara looked up, exhausted and frustrated and angry all at once.

“A purpose… What purpose?” She demanded, furious at the idea that she could have come all this way to be told the path to redemption was through ‘inner peace’. “I want to be whole again. I left National City because every second I spent there I couldn’t stop remembering it.”

She could still feel pains in her body from the things that Lex had done to her.

And those horrible green eyes.

“Everything was a reminder,” she continued. “And now you’re telling me that I’ll never be free of it? I’ll never…”

The slim hope she had clung to, the only thing that had even brought her this far, was on the verge of shattering.

The Mentor’s face showed no emotion as she studied her.

“You do have a choice.”

Kara frowned, confused before the Mentor pointed to her abdomen.

Suddenly, Kara realised what she meant, and her eyes widened. A deep resounding protectiveness welled in her heart, and she instinctively placed a hand over her belly.

“No… no, I don’t,” she choked, shaking her head. “I can’t do that. Not when the baby is…”

Her heart started to pound when the truth finally sunk in that this was real. That she was pregnant. And short of magically producing a child herself, the only other less outlandish idea was that the child had to be Lena’s too.

When they had…

That particular memory was filled with enough emotion to knock over an elephant, and Kara struggled to stop herself from flushing at the memory of it.

But now, she was pregnant. And that changed everything. Kara had only come here to fix herself, and now to discover that she was pregnant and with Lena’s child no less, was overloading her mind.

She didn’t know what to do.

“Come with me,” the Mentor said, walking around her and out a different door than the one that Kara had been led into. Kara followed her quickly, eyes tracking the walls of the corridors. This place was big, functionality and historical elegance mixing smoothly. They walked silently for a long few minutes, passing silent guards with no distinguishing marks on their armour to identify them with a group before the Mentor pushed open a set of double doors.

Kara’s mouth gapped once more.

The mezzanine they stepped out on overlooked a vast, open area with must have been hundreds of men and women fighting in unison and practising their skills. Kara stared out over it with awe, taking in the military vehicles that lined the walls, the weapons and the expertise of the men and women. There was a mix of aliens and humans, all walking and training together freely and seriously.

The strength and power of this place were obvious, and Kara was stunned that such an organisation had maintained such a level of secrecy that no one had ever heard about them before beyond rumours and whispers.

“You’ve died since the death of Supergirl,” the Mentor called, grabbing her attention.

Kara closed her mouth, focusing on the older woman’s words.

“He broke something inside of you, that you think you’ll never be able to get back.”

Kara swallowed, pained.

“And you can give it to me?” She asked, desperately.

The Mentor shook her head, dashing her hopes.

“No,” she answered bluntly. “It is something you can only ever give to yourself.”

Kara felt herself deflate even more, but the Mentor stepped forward until Kara could see the fierce glint in her eyes.

“You’re afraid.”

Kara couldn’t deny it. She nodded.

The Mentor’s eyes turned speculative.

“It’s a feeling like no other, and you must make a choice to either fall to it, or use it to become more powerful then you could ever imagine.”

The Mentor looked out over the floor again, Kara following her gaze to watch with horror and fascination as a man stood in front of a target, expressionless as another threw a series of knives at him in rapid succession. Landing in a perfect silhouette around his form.

If he had so much as twitched, he would have been impaled.

“Fear is a teacher, the first one you ever had,” The Mentor continued. "But you’ve forgotten its lessons.”

Kara felt the words strike her like lightning.

“But how can I go back?” Her voice was hoarse. “I’m not that person anymore.”

She felt pathetic, standing her and begging for a purpose. She felt weak and fragile, a dull shadow of her old self and abilities. Kara wondered even if she got them back if she would ever feel whole again. Forever carrying with her the pain of what she had been through.

“And you never will be again,” the Mentor answered, drawing Kara’s attentions from within herself.

The Mentor stepped even closer, reaching out with a thin finger to lift her chin and inspect her with her eyes slowly.

Kara felt riveted under the cold gaze.

“You still one of the most powerful creatures on the planet.” The Mentor’s words were spoken so starkly, for half a second Kara even found herself believing them. “If someone intelligent were to come after you, they wouldn't attack you directly. They'd try to trick you. Surprise you. And that’s what they did, remember?”

Kara wanted to look away, but couldn’t. Lex had known too much, known her too well. Holding Lena hostage until she gave herself up in exchange.

“They used your weakness against you,” the Mentor hissed. “But you gave them that power in the first place.”

Kara frowned, wanting to refute the woman.

Loving Lena had never been a weakness.

“And now you think you’re broken because your gifts are lost too you.” The Mentor’s other hand raised and pressed over her heart. “You feel fear again, but you don’t recognise it.”

Kara felt her heart start to thud, louder and louder in her ears under the woman’s fingers.

“Remember,” the Mentor continued. “Only Supergirl’s body was invulnerable, but her mind was weak. We can teach you to become stronger than you ever imagined.”

Kara felt it, the truth in the intensity of the Mentor’s gaze. And she wanted it, oh she wanted it more desperately than anything else she ever wanted in her life. She wanted to be healed; she wanted to be better. Faster, quicker, braver. So that nothing like what had happened to her could ever happen again.

“How?” She asked breathlessly. “I’ve tried for years to get them back. It’s impossible.”

The ghost of a smile grew on the Mentor’s face.

“Everything's impossible until somebody does it,” the woman replied. “And your desperation has led you this far.”

She dropped her hands from Lena’s chin and chest, trailing them over Kara’s body, prodding and inspecting. Kara jerked in anger at the treatment, but the Mentor didn’t seem to care. Stretching out her arms roughly.

“No harmony or integration,” the Mentor commented. “No speed or grace. Your body knows what to do, but it's forgotten how.”

She dropped Kara’s arm, hard eyes returning to her face.

“Your wounds are healed, but the muscles are soft and lazy,” she continued. "Your physical memory is short. You’ve lost far more than you realised, basic skills, automatic reflexes. You have to pull your mind away from the end of your goal... stop thinking and exist for the moment, in the here and now.”

Without warning, the Mentor kicked out at Kara’s feet, spreading her stance. Kara rocked, barely recovering before the Mentor slid beside her, forcing her to bend into a fighting position that stretched the muscles in Kara’s back.

“Relax and take each step in its time,” the Mentor whispered, slapping Kara’s elbow to raise them higher. “Let each move flow from the last and into the next.”

She darted with grace back in front of Kara, pressing her hand to her diaphragm and forcing her to take a deep breath.

“Stay within yourself at all times…” The Mentor led her in an exhale. “Expanding the ambition of each move only when and as your skills return.”

The Mentor mimicked the pose she had set Kara into easily, balancing on the balls of her feet as she raised her hands. For a brief panicked second, Kara wondered if she was going to hit her, but instead, the Mentor turned and released a tight and practised flurry of kicks and punched into the air in front of her.

"Learn to absorb acceptable and necessary losses,” she sounded as she finished her final blow. “To achieve every available gain... and to prevail, even poorly... but at least to prevail.”

Kara’s body started to vibrate with the strain of holding her body locked in the position the Mentor had placed her in. Standing straighter, she tried not to wince with the Mentor’s eyes on her.

“You sound like you want to turn me into a soldier.”

The Mentor’s teeth glinted in a feral grin.

“We are all soldiers. Just some better trained than others,” she answered deftly. “You came here seeking our help, and we’re offering it. All we ask is that you commit to your own recovery and seek the truth. Open your eyes.”

Kara’s enthusiasm dwindled, turning to look out at the fighting drills below her. All of them, fighting and training.

But for what?

“I’m not a fighter anymore,” Kara answered dully. “I’ve seen enough death.”

“We die every day,” the Mentor cut in on her thoughts. “A thousand times an hour. Anyone who does this work sees it. Death. Their own... their partner's... their loved ones. We do it anyway. Death is powerless against you if you leave a legacy of good behind. Death is powerless against you if you do your job. Even though death is with us the entire time.”

Kara thought of all the people she had lost in her life. Her parents, her planet, innocents… So much had been lost so pointlessly.

But…

She turned to the Mentor resolutely.

“What do I do?”

The Mentor eyed her fiercely.

“You make a decision right here and now: Whatever has or hasn’t happened in the past, you choose to be the hero of your own story.”

The words twigged something within her, something so similar to what she had said to Lena years ago.

Lena…

“I’m pregnant,” Kara answered uncertainly, covering her abdomen once more.

“And you think this makes you weak?”

Kara hesitated under the Mentor’s gaze.

“I can’t train my body while I’m pregnant.”

“You think this will slow down your rise, but it won’t,” the Mentor disputed. “Your body will recover. It will become stronger. But your true ally will always be your mind. And that is what we will start teaching to be strong.”

This was it, Kara knew. This was the moment where she decided if she was going to stay or if she turned back. Her path was at an end; she had reached where she was meant to be. Kara’s hand traced lightly over her stomach, thinking of Lena once more.

If she went back, she would be returning to a city full of shattered memories. Returning to Lena with an unexpected pregnancy, after she had all but run out on her. Kara wasn’t ready to be a parent. These days she was barely prepared to be a person, but she knew that if she went back, she wasn’t going to get better.

If she didn’t have her powers, then who was she?

And even if she never got them back, forging herself into a new person was better then spending the rest of her life wondering if she could have been something more.

“When do we start?”

The Mentor flicked a finger, and in a blink, a man dropped from the rafters above them. Someone that Kara had never even seen. A long, obsidian spear hung on his back; his armour was thick and broad. Without expression, he pulled a knife from a hidden sheath and handed it to her. The symbol of an eagle was stamped on its pommel.

Kara took it with unease but took it nonetheless.

The Mentor smiled.

“Now.”

Kara eased the bedroom door open gently, not wanting to awaken Kieran. A swell of pleasure filled her when she saw that Lena was lying next to her, in the same position she had been earlier, reading a book in out loud softly in french. Kara’s eyebrows furrowed when she noticed the cover, The Count of Monte Cristo, feeling a slight pang of annoyance before she let it drift away.

If Lena noticed her entrance, she didn’t look up. Continuing her soft reading, Kara took a few steps toward her, soaking in the sight. Something old and familiar ached in her. Nights of wondering what Lena and Kieran would look like together, in moments of family, rising. Amid hell, when sometimes Kara wondered if they would ever be able to escape, Kara wouldn’t have dared to dream of something like this. But it was a bittersweet feeling now. The events earlier in the day cast a shadow over it. After all, the only reason that Kieran was asleep now was that she almost died.

Clearing her throat, Lena looked up at the sound. 

“How is she?” Kara asked quietly, walking until she could sink on the edge of the mattress and gently tuck a stray strand of hair behind Kieran’s ear.

“She’s been sleeping,” Lena answered, watching her ministrations. “Did your sister leave?”

Kara nodded, not wanting to think on it overmuch. Truthfully, she was exhausted. The only thing that she wanted to do was curl up into a ball next to Kieran and fall asleep with her. The events of the day, of the past few years, had caught up with her, and she didn’t feel she had much left to give.

“You didn’t have to make her play guardian angel over me these past few years.”

The words feigned at annoyance, but when Kara glanced up to Lena, she saw that there was no malice in her eyes. Just caged fire and guarded walls.

She remembered the feel of Lena’s hands as she held her this morning, and the lump rose in her throat again before she tore her gaze away.

“It didn’t work,” Kara breathed instead.

The lingering tension that always existed between them rose, spiky and electric as ever.

“Tell me what you’re not saying… And then I’ll tell you what I’m not.”

Kara didn’t want to do this anymore, but she knew that there was no chance of escaping it. Back and forth of tense information and half-truths. She knew that Lena was angry that she wasn’t telling her the truth, that she wasn’t telling her anything, but was probably holding back from launching into another argument because of the incident this morning.

Kara felt equally guilty and relieved about that. She hadn’t wanted Lena to see just how on edge she was. Kara had left National City in the first place to find strength, and yet she returned with even less then she had.

The only thing that mattered was keeping her daughter safe.

But Lena… Kara would be lying to herself if she said that she wasn’t desperate to learn everything about her life and what had happened to her. She wanted to understand more about what Lena was doing and why. She wanted to unfold every crevice and discover every guarded truth.

But she couldn’t.

Kara looked at Lena once more, who was still watching her with the same caged eyes.

“There’s so much we don’t know about each other anymore.”

It had been involuntary, and redundant, Lena’s mouth twisting at the words.

“You’ve always been good with secrets.”

Kara didn’t even have the energy to let the barb sting. She just looked back at Kieran’s sleeping face, and couldn’t stop herself from smiling.

“Thank you,” she whispered brokenly, on the verge of tears again. “For saving her.”

Lena shifted on the mattress, a strange expression on her face.

“There’s nothing to thank.”

Kara smiled at her tearily.

“It’s everything.”

Lena looked uncomfortable at her words, but Kara saw how her finger tightened on the book she was holding, and almost unconsciously moved towards Kieran.

“What else can she do?”

Kara closed her eyes briefly, pained.

“You didn’t ask her last night?” She dared.

“Of course I did,” Lena snapped, only lowering her voice when Kieran shifted in her sleep. “She was notoriously tight-lipped about it. I tried to bribe her with food, all the ice-cream you bought actually, but all I got out of her was that her favourite animal is the box jellyfish and she can’t tie her shoes.”

Kara let out a mirthless laugh, a flicker of guilty pride for Kieran’s adherence to her lessons not to talk to anyone about her powers.

“She likes that they actively hunt their prey,” Kara replied. “And she doesn’t view it as an essential skill… Not when I can do it for her.”

Lena’s angry expression softened at the words.

“She stopped talking any time I tried to prod.” Lena let her book fall to the side as she shifted slightly. “She’d just sit there eating for five minutes in silence.”

The corner of Kara’s mouth twitched at Lena’s irritated words, picturing the familiar and harsh set of Kieran’s scowl whenever she felt like she was being pushed for something that she didn’t want to do. Kieran had a sometimes exasperating habit of only doing things that she wanted to do, and would never let anyone else dictate the pace. It was something that Kara had always thought reminded her of Lena.

Kara smiled at her.

“She likes you.”

Lena looked unsure for a moment, then Kara thought she saw an answering smile, but it vanished back into focused concern.

“Kara… what else can she do?”

Kara looked away from them both, out the window and over the city skyline. During the day, nobody would ever guess that it had developed a thick underbelly of crime. Even at the sunset like it was now. Nobody would ever have imagined that a vigilante was prowling the streets, and according to a very reluctant Alex, the only one managing to keep the peace between the gangs downtown. Stopping all-out wars from breaking out, while the police took bribes to stay away. This city had rotted to its core, but unlike Gotham, it didn’t even have the honesty to reflect it at its face. It was still all shiny buildings, blue skies and a bustling CBD.

Skin deep beauty, with so many dangerous things in the night.

Kara looked back at Lena and felt some of her resolve shift.

“Every power she has is developing,” she replied. “The directed control she has of them is sporadic.”

Lena seemed surprised that she was telling her something but quickly schooled her expression.

“I’ve seen her lift things fifty times her weight because she wanted to see what it looked like underneath, and the next day she couldn’t even pull open a jammed door,” Kara answered haltingly. “But then… she did. Without touching it.”

Kara could see Lena’s mind working.

“She has telekinetic abilities.”

A tiny piece of her resolve shifted again.

“Yes.”

“Telepathic too?”

Kara bit her cheek, and at the triumphant look in Lena’s eyes, she supposed that was answer enough.

“Yes.”

“How powerful-“

Kara cut her off, feeling welling panic and having little desire to go back to that place twice in one day.

“I don’t know.”

Which was entirely accurate, even if Lena didn’t look like she believed her.

“Why did you tell her to keep them hidden from me?”

Kara winced at the harsh tone.

“I didn’t want to overwhelm you.”

Lena gave her an incredulous look, sitting upright and rigid.

“Really? You didn’t want to overwhelm me?”

Kara’s fingers tightened, and she looked away, cursing herself for saying anything at all. Answering questions always led to more questions.

“Lena, the people that we’re running from, are dangerous,” she tried to explain. “And they’re not coming for me.”

The caged fire in Lena’s eyes flared, her face cold now.

“Did they hurt her?” She demanded coldly.

Kara could see it, the vibrating protectiveness that Lena was positively emanating and she felt a rush of love for it. But the words themselves brought back the painful memories once more, and she grimaced.

“They tried.”

Oh, they had tried.

And failed.

Lena’s postured didn’t relax at all, and her eyes only became more intense.

“Did they hurt you?”

Kara’s face paled, feeling herself heading back to that place she began the count in her head.

“I want her to be safe, Lena,” was all she replied.

Lena didn’t look happy with her answer; in fact, she looked enraged. But not at Kara herself, and she guessed that Lena’s anger was directed to the people that were hunting them instead.

“She can’t be safe,” Lena growled. “If you don’t tell me what’s going on.”

At that moment, she wanted to spill all the burden out. Finally allowing Lena in so she could share some of its load. But she couldn’t.

“Not yet,” she answered apologetically, trying to make Lena understand if not with her words then with her eyes.

But Lena just shook her head and moved off the bed. Standing to her feet, she stared down at kara with hard eyes.

“Get some sleep,” she muttered, before moving to walk away.

Kara stood too.

“Where are you going?”

Lena spared her a glance over her shoulder but stopped at the doorway.

“I can’t afford to put my mission on hold,” she answered frankly. “Not for you or for…”

There was a pregnant pause before Lena finished her words.

“Things are moving in this city and crime waits for no-one.”

Kara walked after her.

“Lena, if you go out there-“

“What?” Lena snapped, turning sharply to face her with an inferno in her eyes that made Kara stop in her tracks. “You going to turn up and tell me how to live my life? You have no idea of who I am or what I’m doing. I wasn’t waiting for you to come back in some picture of bliss, Kara. You’ve landed problems right on top of a huge pile of my own.”

Kara recoiled at the angry words.

“You’d rather we not be here?” She asked quietly.

Lena let out a heavy sigh, her shoulder draining of tension. She stepped towards her with softer eyes.

“No, of course not,” she replied gently. “I’m just saying that these past few years, and all the horrible things that you’re refusing to talk about… I’ve seen it too. Here. In my city. The one I didn’t leave.”

Kara looked down at the floor for a few moments before she nodded.

“Go.”

“Kara-“

She cut Lena off, her words not meant to be angry. Just honest.

“Go,” she repeated. “You’re right. It’s not my place to say anything. To ask questions or to volunteer answers.”

Lena’s jaw worked for a few seconds, but she didn’t reply. But remained rooted to the spot.

“Lena, I trust you with my life,” Kara insisted. “More importantly and far more seriously, I trust you with my daughter’s. But you don’t have to trust me… And I don’t have to trust you with anything beyond that.”

Lena’s face contorted with something, but she stepped back into the growing shadow of the room.

“Get some sleep.”

He was above her. Her hands tied down with thick chains, as he grinned that horrible grin. A flash of a blade in his hand as he dragged it down her cheek.

“If you could make God bleed, people would cease to believe in them.”

She felt the sting, the burn, and started to scream.

“No! NO!”

She kept thrashing, screaming and shaking against him before his words morphed into a softer voice.

“Kara, it’s ok! Kara it’s ok, I’m here.”

Her eyes opened in the dark, the hovering form above her just making her panic more until she realised that it was Lena. Kara’s mind blew back into reality with the force of a tornado, and she let out a mournful sob. She had fisted the sheets in her hand and contorted them further as she twisted away from Lena’s eyes and began to cry into her pillow.

“It’s not real,” she choked out, her teeth grinding with each rushed word. “It’s not real; it’s not real.”

“It was just a dream,” Lena soothed above her, gently reaching out to peel Kara’s sweat-soaked hair away from her forehead. “You’re safe now. You’re safe.”

Kara’s body still shook with sobs, but she managed to latch onto Lena’s words.

“He’ll find me,” she whispered brokenly. “He’ll take me away.”

Lena shushed her, letting Kara clutch her hand tightly when she rolled over onto her back.

“He can’t touch you anymore,” Lena answered. “I promise.”

Kara stared up at her through the dark, unable to see her face clearly but feeling relief regardless.

“Don’t leave me tonight,” she begged. “Please.”

Lena lay down next to her, wrapping her as gently as if she was a broken doll in her arms.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Kara drank her glass of water with shaky hands, trying not to let the nightmare that had woken her from Kieran’s side make her hands shake too much. Her whole body ached from it and the events of the day, but loud footfalls turned her attention, and she whirled to see Lena, armoured in a black, sleek suit, leaning against the corridor wall and staring at her with dark-rimmed eyes. Even in the dark, Kara could see that her hair was plastered to her head with sweat, and her armour was covered in the dust of a fight.

Kara stepped forward, her water forgotten, but her mouth still dry.

“Kara,” Lena croaked.

Her eyes flickered over Lena’s form, concern growing at the pained hunch she was holding herself in.

“You’re hurt,” Kara whispered, her fingers itching to catch her in case she fell.

“Yeah,” Lena answered, still staring at her.

Kara tried to swallow.

“Do you need help?” She asked hesitantly.

Lena stared at her for a long pause before nodding.

“Yeah.”

Kara followed Lena into her armoury, the hidden panel sliding close behind him. In the panic of this morning, Kara hadn’t had a chance to really look around. Her eyes scanning the well-stocked weapons rack, small laboratory and the rack where a beautiful and sleek glider rested, Kara felt a trained urge to immediately scrutinise everything, cataloguing what it was and how it worked, but she recentered herself immediately when Lena started to remove her armour with a hiss. Stepping forward, Kara caught her arm, stopping her. Lena flinched at the touch and stared at Kara with confusion. Kara waited for a few heavy seconds, her breath catching slightly as they stared at each other with only a foot between them. Kara couldn’t stop her eyes from tracing Lena’s face desperately, the sudden urge to memorise everything overcoming her.

Lena took a moment too before she dropped her arm and let Kara take over. Carefully, Kara felt for the joins and gently removed Lena’s armour piece by piece. Taking the time to admire them quickly, before placing them aside.

Lena’s skin-tight undershirt was stuck to her body with lined sweat, and the lingering smell of gunfire and smoke grew stronger once she sat still on the gurney. There was a large laceration on her upper back, but Kara hesitated briefly, vividly aware that Lena’s eyes were intently watching her, before speaking.

“Can you lift remove your shirt, or do you need me to cut you out?”

Lena seemed uncertain before she replied.

“I can remove it… but could you just… help?”

In another context, Lena asking Kara to help remove her shirt would have made her blush from head to toe. As it was, with the battling metallic smells in the air, and Lena looked at her with a mixture of battle-weary exhaustion and discomfort, Kara could only nod.

Gripping the thin synthetic hem, Kara stepped closer and slowly curled the shirt up to Lena’s ribs, waiting until Lena lifted her arms so she could pull it off over her head and throw it away. As close as she was, Kara heard the pained noise Lena let out when the material pulled away from her wound. Stepping away, Kara’s brain short-circuited being so close to so much of Lena’s bare skin. Wondering if the lustful feelings that grew at the sight of Lena’s hard abdomen and arms were because she wanted Lena, or because she wanted to look the way Lena did.

The way that Kara used to look.

It was probably both.

Not wanting to be caught ogling, Kara swiftly moved around behind Lena, eyeing the purpling, raised bruises that littered her back, most likely caused by gunfire. She had sworn to herself that she wouldn’t let her mind run away with the knowledge and terror, that Lena was risking her life as Outlier. She had only been back for what seemed like a minute, but clearly, the danger in Lena’s life was just as present as it was in Kara’s. Still, she couldn’t stop herself from wincing when she eyed the laceration that the knife had left behind, the blood sluggish but still running. Kara pulled the mobile medical station toward her, and with a mumble of warning, started to work on the wound.

Lena didn’t so much as flinch, but her knuckles did whiten until the local anaesthetic Kara injected numbed the area. There was silence for a long while, lasting the time it took for Kara to clean the wound, Lena breaking Kara’s concentration once she began to stitch it closed.

“Of all the ways our lives could have gone,” Lena whispered exhaustedly. “Did you ever picture them here?”

Kara felt it too. Bone weary exhaustion from years and years of problems that only kept mounting and never entirely went away.

“What… with you running around the city as a dark vigilante and me, a mother of a three-year-old, sewing your wounds closed?” She answered, attempting at weak humour.

It seemed to work vaguely, Lena letting out a soft sound.

“Maybe you thought it’d be the other way around?”

Kara paused for a millisecond.

“You always thought there’d be a kid in the picture?”

She heard the sharp intake of breath and mentally kicked herself. With so much else going on, between Kieran this morning and discovering that Lena was Outlier, Kara was letting her mouth run away with her.

And out of the two of them, Kara was convinced that Lena was still the one who had the most to adjust too. The last thing she needed right now was Kara to even in the passing suggest that there could be a possibility or should have been, or she wanted there to be of something else between them.

It was all too confusing.

“Maybe for you,” Lena finally answered, her voice tight and distant now. “Two point five kids in the suburbs with a strapping man. You, flitting back and forth with a streaming cape behind you… and of course, Mr Jawline was just fine, dandy with you being Supergirl because you had told him straight away who you really were.”

The last remark was intended to be cutting, and Kara felt it that way. She didn’t reply, knowing that whatever she said in response wouldn’t be the right answer anyway. There wasn’t any answer that could heal that hurt in a few words.

Kara kept working instead, concentrating on making sure her stitches were neat and tight.

“Who taught you to do this?” Lena asked, her voice tired.

Kara paused, thinking before she started to stitch once more.

“I’ve been without powers for years, in a dangerous world.”

It took everything within her to stop her voice from trembling, or her fingers from shaking. Kara tried to ground herself in this room, in this reality. In this time. Holding at bay everything else. All the memories that she wished she could scrub out of her brain forever.

She wasn’t going to fall apart again.

Lena let out a soft sigh, sounding disappointed by her lack of explanation.

“I suppose so.”

Kara felt weak then, the sadness and lack of trust eating at her. But she reminded herself that there were reasons beyond her now. She had Kieran to look after too, and the truth, the whole truth, wasn’t ready to be spoken if she could ever even find the strength to talk about it.

But there had been so much she had stolen from Lena, so much she had promised implicitly, she didn’t want every conversation to end in dwindled words and reminders that there was so much they weren’t telling each other.

“I know we don’t want to ask questions,” Kara started, strikingly aware of how her fingers were touching Lena’s skin. “Or can’t before we get answers themselves, but you’re going to tell me how this all works at one point, right?”

Kara looked around the room at all the tech and laboratory equipment.

"I mean… this looks pretty cool. And an AI-“

“How did you know Vera was an AI?”

There was a hint of challenge in Lena’s voice, and suspicion, but all it did was make Kara smile.

“She’s got too much personality in her voice to be a VI,” she explained, continuing her work.

Lena’s muscles tensed under her touch, and she let out a grunt.

The sound should have deflated Kara, but she was weirdly finding the newly grumpy version of Lena oddly attractive, so all it did was make her smile. That and she had clearly annoyed Lena by figuring out the truth.

“I know you well enough that you’d need to be working with something that could evolve, so it challenged you,” she explained. "A VI couldn’t do that.”

Lena didn’t answer quickly.

“You’re not terrified she’ll end up as an evil overlord?”

Kara laughed, shaking her head.

“If she wanted to, I’m sure she would,” Kara explained, smirking now knowing that Lena couldn’t see her expression. “I wouldn’t blame her for putting up with your vigilante shenanigans for years.”

There was a long pause after that, and Kara found herself holding her breath, wondering if she had pushed the lightheartedness too far too soon. She half expected Lena to turn around and yell at her, or at the very least push her away.

But for whatever reason, Lena just let out another tired breath.

“You’re going to give her ideas.”

Kara smiled slowly, working on the final stitch.

“Is that why you’re stopping her from speaking right now?”

Lena didn’t say a word, but Kara didn’t mind. Little ease on the stones sitting in her heart was enough to make her feel lighter then she had in a long time.

Quietly, she finished her work, bandaging to make sure that the wound would stay clean and safe. Her fingers traced around Lena’s skin longer then they should have, and the lightness dimmed and shifted back to longing and regret. Struggling to contain herself, she tried to fill the silence once more.

“Where were you tonight?”

Kara didn’t know what level of stupid she must have been to let that question slip out. Particularly with the amount of concern she had in her voice, which was not something she wanted Lena to cast as insincere.

“Drug dealers… low level.”

Kara blinked, surprised that Lena had answered. Keeping her fingers in place a few seconds longer, she shifted away and walking back around the table until she was standing in front of Lena once more.

Lena watched her the entire time, the dark fire in her eyes muted somewhat now as she stared. Neither of them said anything for a while, and Kara tried to stop her mind from running with scenarios and imaginings at Lena’s words. She couldn’t help herself from comparing the idea of Lena fighting this city’s criminals with herself. Or rather, her old self.

Did Lena get the same rush that she used to? Knowing that she had done something to make a difference, or that she was at least trying? Or was she less naive then Kara had been, understanding that just because you thought what you were doing was right it didn’t mean anyone else did?

Lena had once asked her what Supergirl thought gave her the right to take the role she had, placing herself as the hero of this city. It had taken Kara a long time to realise that no one had. It had evolved, first from a need to be more then what she had become — then blinding desperation to save her sister’s life. Sometimes when she had woken up from yet another nightmare, Kara would wonder when it had all evolved in her head to a point where she thought, at least partially, that she did have a right to call herself a hero of people who didn’t necessarily want her to be.

Did Lena think of that when she chose to be Outlier?

Struggling, Kara finally let out some of the tension she had bottled up. Trying to stop looking at Lena and seeing the woman she thought she was, or the one that Kara wanted her to be, she instead decided to look at Lena as the person that she was now.

Reaching for a stool, Kara dragged it towards the gurney and sat down uncertainly. Lena didn’t move to stop her. She didn’t move to do anything, just kept watching her with the same tried eyes.

Kara felt that.

“And what were you doing last night that made Kieran want to heal you?”

She didn’t brace herself for anything, and she tried not to expect it. But Lena’s eyes still flashed. With suspicion, defensiveness and anger.

“Fighting girl scouts,” Lena replied. “Tough ones.”

Kara's eyes dropped to the floor, wondering if the path they were treading together was going to end with either or both of them falling into a web of their own making.

Or the others.

“You know.” Kara traced the line of her pant leg. "For someone who’s been doing this for as long as you have and has your brains, you think you’d of invented an armour that would stop you from getting knifed.”

Kara’s eyes flitted up when she heard Lena slip off the table. Landing on the ground with a heavy thump, she walked towards her armour and picked up the damaged piece. Tracing the deep cut with a small frown, she threw it away and turned to face Kara. Leaning back against the bench, she looked at Kara with kinder eyes.

“Well, you know…. You invent one thing, they come up with the next to get around it,” she explained, jerking her head towards a bench in the far corner.

Scattered across it were old armour components, blueprints and glass liquid samples.

“I think this was Nth metal, but I can’t be sure,” Lena continued. “It’s been floating around the city… scraps of it. Pretty hard to come up with an armour that is light enough to stop a direct hit with the strength of twenty men behind it.”

Kara nodded, thinking before she smiled weakly up at Lena.

“You certainly do lead an interesting nightlife now,” she commented wryly. “I guess it beats you falling asleep at your desk, buried in paperwork.”

Those days may have seemed more unaffected, once upon a time. But Kara wasn’t delusional enough to want them back. Not when she had to convince herself every day that lying to Lena was somehow worth it when it really wasn’t.

Now at least she knew with blinding honesty, why she was wary with her words.

She had reasons beyond her own selfishness.

Lena observed her, a slight crease forming between her eyebrows before she shook her head slightly and looked away.

“So, am I going to get a choppy scar?” Lena’s words jolted Kara out of her reverie. “I’m told the ladies love them.”

Jealousy. Unjust and unfair and certainly unwarranted, but it bloomed in Kara’s heart all the same. She tried to wrestle with and beat it back with the same thing she had been telling herself for years.

She didn’t own Lena, and she certainly had no right to claim or keep her from being with anyone else.

But still… the thought of Lena being with anyone else at all was…

Kara stood to her feet, moving back to the medical kit and slowly started to pack it away. Trying to lose her negative spiral in the activity.

“You seem to have enough of them to attract fifty of these hypothetical women,” she answered neutrally. “They’ll all be flocking when you take off your shirt.”

The corner of Lena’s mouth ticked up so quickly that by the time Kara double checked herself, it had already vanished and smoothed back into the same neutral line.

“I’ve got no time for dating,” she brushed off. “What with being a new parent, a vigilante, tracking down criminals and being a reclusive CEO…. dating is the last thing on my mind.”

Kara felt the barbs were they were meant to land but didn’t let the sting linger too much against her own inability not to probe.

“Well, I’m sure there must have been a few over the years.”

She’d aimed for disinterested but could hear her tone missing the mark by a mile. If Lena’s sudden scowl was any indication, the other woman had definitely noticed the bite in her words.

“Not that I have any right to comment.” Annoyed with herself now, she rushed it out.

Lena’s scowl didn’t ease.

“You don’t.”

Kara physically felt them landing right back to square one. Closing the last drawer of the medical kit, she took her time in the silence to think for a few seconds.

“You’re a good person, Lena.” Not looking up, and speaking more to remind herself than the other woman. “You deserve to be happy.”

And she did. She deserved to be so much happier then she had been allowed to be. Once, Kara had just wanted to make things better in Lena’s life, as much as she could, but she had allowed herself to get swept up in it all and had forgotten that without total honesty, her presence in Lena’s life was always going to end up hurting her.

You couldn’t have the history that existed, reaching into both their lives by both of their families since before they had even met, and expect that continuing to hide the truth would somehow lead to something good. It was what she had believed for far too long, or what she had told herself knowing that it was wrong.

And then it just got worse and worse, and by the time she sat on the precipice of hiding the most crucial truth of all, she had been unable to turn back.

Kara wished she could say it all aloud; she hoped that Lena could understand that this time was different.

“Happiness is for people who don’t have the money to be blissfully cynical.”

Lena’s acidic words lanced through all her twisting thoughts, and when she blinked back to reality, Kara realised that they hadn’t even been intended for her, but Lena herself.

Lena was still looking at her, but through her at the same time. And for the first time, Kara could see that the old and familiar self-loathing that Lena had cultivated all her life was still in her, stronger than ever even if darker and thicker walls masked it.

Her problems drifted out, in favour of anger.

“You’re so full of shit.”

Lena’s eyes refocused with a snap, and for the first time since Kara had arrived, she looked totally gobsmacked. Kara stepped forward, feeling every inch of her strength, even if it dwindled, filling her.

“What?”

Kara brushed the shock off with a snarl.

“I said you’re so full of shit.” Stepping closer and into Lena’s space, the other woman looking up at her with surprise.

Kara surprised herself too. She had forgotten that she was taller.

She refocused before she lost her courage.

“You’re putting on this martyr, bullshit fucking act, and it’s all because you’re full of shit.”

Lena’s jaw worked silently, her mouth gapped, but her face turned thunderous. Kara thought for a second that this was probably the first time someone had the audacity to get angry at Lena for her brooding behaviour in years. 

“You came to me for help,” Lena hissed dangerously, but Kara remained unflinching. “You came to me for my protection.”

Kara scoffed, pointing to the damaged armour that Lena had thrown to the side.

“I didn’t know you were spending every night almost getting yourself killed!” Knowing she was unfair, feeling the pressure of the day building up in her mind, but not caring. “How are you supposed to protect us when you’re dead?”

A nerve in Lena’s jaw twitched.

“How is this any different from your time as Supergirl?” She demanded lowly, her knuckles turning white.

“Because you’re human,” Kara retorted. “And I’m… was, near invincible.”

She caught herself on the stumble, the dull but brief hurt when she had a moment when she forgot still came. But it racked and vanished, she quickly composed herself.

“A knife would’ve bent if it hit me,” she continued, her voice slower. “Even Nth steel.”

Lena didn’t look overly impressed.

“So? That gave you the monopoly on who could be the person to protect this city from it’s worst impulses?”

Her eyes were deadly, and Kara could feel that they were now both at the line of another argument. The one she had wished earlier that they had already had so that it could be done. Damage and all. But now that they were both here, Kara shied away from the edge. The way that she always had.

Because she could see it in Lena’s eyes.

I’ll never forgive you.

“Of course not,” Kara said, subdued. “I want to know that you’re doing this for the right reasons. Not because you think this is the fastest way to get high on your way to oblivion.”

Kara could see it in her, even if Lena thought that she hid it well. The dark thing within, the beast with glowing eyes. An obsession, a thirst for something that could keep feeding the blackness in her mind and soul until that was all that was left to think about. Until nothing else could ever hurt her, touch her or make her feel ever again.

Kara may not know Lena’s motivations to be Outlier, at least not entirely, but she did understand that.

But the anger in Lena’s eyes flared at her words, fanned into flames.

“What would you know about oblivion?”

Kara could feel it, just like when Lena had rounded on her after Kieran had almost…

Her heart started to race, and Kara could feel sweat build on the inside of her palms. The sense of doom and terror that never really left her rose once more. It took all her strength to stay grounded, but even as she attempted to keep breathing calmly, she couldn’t stop small flashes slipping through.

Stuck inside a pod, watching an endless universe and forever trapped. All the worst fights, when she could feel that panicked high of being an inch from death.

And that horrible, horrible, maniacal face as it grinned down at her with glowing green eyes as she screamed.

“You know… that I know,” she managed to break through, before closing her eyes and trying to centre herself on the one thing in her life that always brought her back to herself.

Kieran. Smiling, reading or informing her of some new and obscure bit of information that Kara would never have realised was missing from her life.

It helped, and after a few minutes, Kara was able to open her eyes and look back up at Lena, who was now as white as a sheet and had a face full of regret.

“I’m sorry,” Lena whispered out. “I should never have said that.”

Kara didn’t want to be a person that Lena was terrified to show honest emotions with. She certainly didn’t want every conversation they had to lead to an argument, but if it did, Kara didn’t want Lena to think that she was somehow using her anxiety as a tool to stop Lena from being able to be upset with her.

But even thinking that, and looking into Lena’s remorseful face, Kara knew that there was no way that Lena would have anything but empathy for that.

It didn’t stop Kara from feeling broken, though.

Swallowing the dry lump in her throat, Kara’s eyes traced Lena’s body once more. Staring at the thin, but still visible, silver scars that crisscrossed her entire body. She wondered how egregious the wounds had been, and how long they had taken to heal. Kara wondered just how close Lena had come to dying as Outlier, while she remained cut off from the rest of the world. Unable to know if Lena had died in a ditch.

Reaching out as if drawn, her fingers hovered lightly over a long scar on Lena’s stomach, tracing it in the air without touching it.

“So many…”

Lena’s breath caught at her words, her hand snapping to capture Kara’s wrist as if to stop it from touching her. Kara took the hint and withdrew quickly, trying to prevent herself from getting lost in it all.

She took a step away but stopped when she realised that Lena hadn’t released her gentle grip on her wrist. A tenseness grew in her chest, but instead of causing pained shortness of breath, her heart pounded in an entirely different way.

Lena’s hand turned her arm over slowly and held it until Kara’s fingers uncurled, and her palm sat bare. Lena’s grip loosened, then, her fingers slowly turning over the curve of Kara’s wrist, tracing with the barest hint of touch down her skin until they hovered lightly over Kara’s palm.

Kara’s breath caught slightly, unable to look away, and her own fingers curled upwards until they were a breath away from Lena’s too. Until finally, their fingers both closed the distance.

The second their skin lightly touched once more, Kara looked up and faltered slightly under Lena’s intense gaze.

“You have your own.” Her husky voice breathed. “Or… had.”

Kara shuddered at that, the memories of the old wounds feeling suddenly less impactful when Lena wasn’t looking at her with anger. She remembered so much more then she wanted too, but then felt guilty for not remembering enough. It had taken a long time to get to now, where she could untangle some of the ways that he had twisted her mind.

Promises of a world were people would hate her. A world where she deserved to be hated. A world where she was the enemy.

And then of a world where she was nothing at all.

“If you could make God bleed,” Kara whispered out. “People would cease to believe in them.”

Lena made a small, pained, noise.

“Nobody ever lost faith in Supergirl, Kara,” she explained, her words far too kind. “She died a hero… She died fighting for what was right. They still believe in her… they just feel lost.”

Kara’s breath caught again.

“Did I leave you feeling lost?”

Lena’s fingers started to tremble against the skin of Kara’s palm, but she didn’t look away or move them. But her eyes changed, and the walls dropped, and Kara saw something beyond the harsh fire. The deep darkness and pain that now sat so much closer to the surface, then Kara wished it would.

Kara wanted to tell Lena that she felt it too. She tried to tell her everything.

But she couldn’t. Not yet.

“I don’t know anymore how you left me feeling,” Lena answered unsteadily. “It’s all become so much more then it was, and it was already a lot. I don’t know what to feel about you.”

It was the right answer, but it was so wrong too. How horrible must she be, Kara thought, to do this all over again but a million times worse. Unable to admit to anything under the fear of ruining everything. Unable to take Lena by the shoulders, pull her close and tell her that she was the only one who had ever made Kara realise that external things couldn't heal the part of herself that was broken. That it was something that Kara had to love and heal herself, and Lena was the one to look at that broken part and turn to Kara without horror, but a smile. Because to her, it wasn’t ugly at all.

And she couldn’t tell her that.

But she was too selfish to pull away, there was too much at stake.

“And how do you feel… How do you feel about Kieran?” Kara asked, needing to know urgently.

Kara had seen it this morning, seen it in Lena’s eyes and the way she and Kieran had interacted.

Love.

Lena looked away from her.

“She’s….”

Kara cast a look at her wary face. Of course, terrified would be a more apt description. She supposed in another reality before she had become a parent herself, she might have found it disappointing.

Now, she would have been worried if Lena wasn’t scared.

But even though it made total sense, she was caught off guard by Lena’s eyes snapping back to hers with so much raw agony that Kara almost took a step back.

“I don’t know what you want from me, bringing her here,” she snapped out, her voice tight with tension. “I understand that you thought that could keep her safe, but you won’t tell me anything I’m supposed to be keeping her safe from.”

Kara tried to look away, but Lena seemed to sense her turn and ducked her head to continue their locked gaze. For a brief second Kara had a stab of fear that Lena would grab her chin or shoulders to force her attention, but she made no move to do so. And even though her gaze didn’t drop in intensity, Kara felt a tiny part of her tension ease. Automatically, she turned to look back at Lena properly and found herself unable to look away.

“She won’t tell me either,” Lena continued in a gentler voice, her eyes still betraying her pain. "Which in my mind means one of two things. Either, you’ve trained her not to tell me or anyone anything, or whatever you’re running from is so traumatic that neither of you can find the words.”

Kara felt her heart catch, her eyes darting down to the way that Lena’s hands were shaking.

“I don’t know which one frightens me more.”

Everything in Kara slipped away, feeling like a sudden exhaust of the choking smoke that filled and fuelled her every day.

And all she could see was Lena.

Exactly as she was.

“Do we frighten you?” Her voice hushed and filled with remorse. “Do I?”

Lena’s lower lips started to tremble, and her eyes filled with tears.

“Why are you here, Kara?” She pled. “Just to push me away again?”

Kara felt her tears grow.

“Push you away?” She cried. "Why would I want to push you away?”

I love you.

Kara thought it with such demand, that when Lena flinched for a second Kara thought she had said it aloud.

“You don’t get to say that.” Lena raised a hand between them, a tear slipping down her cheek. “Pretend like that’s… not what this is.”

Kara willed herself, not cry. That was the last thing that Lena deserved.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

It wasn’t enough. It’ll never be enough.

Lena’s eyes closed and she took a shuddered breath before they opened once more and her hand dropped limply.

“I think you’re sorry about a lot of things…,” she answered. “I’m sorry about a lot of things. It doesn’t change that they happened.”

Kara took a long breath.

“You don’t trust me.”

She didn’t expect it, of course. How could she?

“No, I don’t,” Lena answered, without anger or bite. “And I don’t think you trust me either.”

Kara wished she could say she did, but these days she didn’t trust anyone.

Not even herself.

But of all the people in the world, the one she still trusted the most was Lena.

Lena’s shoulder’s slumped, and they just stared at each other. If the situation between them weren’t so fucked up, Kara would have laughed. Two exhausted people, who had survived more battles, heartbreak, loss then Kara could count, and they were still somehow here. Alive and breathing, with a child that was so utterly strange and innocent, while they stood swaying like old soldiers in front of each other.

“But we both know that, whatever is going on, we’d both die making sure that she stays safe.”

Kara could hear her resolve and anger and every other emotion that spanned the breadth of emotions she had felt towards her daughter. And it made her want to cry for an entirely different reason.

“It’s strange how easy it happens, isn’t it?”

Lena gave her a confused look, but there was a wary enough understanding to make Kara smile.

“Loving them… worrying about them,” Kara explained, shaking her head ruefully. “When she was born, and I first held her in my arms I just… I cried. That I could have had a tiny part in creating someone so magnificent and special was… something I’d never experienced before.”

Kara’s grew lost in the memory, a sea of them, every moment with her daughter from the second she found out she was pregnant to the second she had last left her sleeping in bed. Not all of them were happy, not in the least, but there was always the same burning knowledge that she loved her daughter.

“It was all tied up in hopes and dreams and pain and sadness and everything that I’d ever experienced…” Her whisper continued, opening her eyes and looking down at her hands. “But this tiny, perfect child, had no idea of any of that.”

She swallowed, looking up into Lena’s riveted eyes.

“And all I wanted her to know wasn’t about Krypton, or the past or anything bad… I just wanted her to know that the future was her’s… and she would be so, so, loved.”

Lena bit her lip when her words finished.

“Kara…” She asked slowly. “Would you ever have told me?”

Kara felt her tongue grow heavy in her mouth.

“I wish… I wish that…” Her words trailed, getting lost in the green fire of Lena’s eyes.

I could say yes, but…. I don’t know. I’m not sure if I ever… planned to come back.

She wanted to scream at herself.

Lena shook her head, her fingers turning white as they clenched into fists.

“Do you understand what this feels like?” Her voice trembled with anger and sadness. “To have whole years I could have had with her stolen from me? And what’s worse, they were stolen by you. You made that choice to keep her from me.”

Kara covered her mouth with her hand, trying to stop herself from collapsing. She took a few seconds to drop it and finally replied.

“I did it for her safety… and for mine.”

Lena took a breath.

“I would never hurt you.”

Kara bit the inside of her cheek.

“I’m not talking about you.”

She couldn’t say it; she couldn’t say it, she couldn’t even know it.

Lena’s face filled with stress and unease.

“Why won’t you tell me what happened to you?” Her voice begged and cracked. “I want to help you.”

Kara began to nod rapidly, but she couldn’t explain it all.

“I know you do,” she answered, looking around the room and lingered on the damaged armour. “I want to help you too.”

Lena recoiled instantly. Kara couldn’t help but feel hurt.

“What I do… it’s mine.” Lena steadied, her voice firm and defensive. “No one else’s.”

Kara walked a few steps, scoffing. Shaking her head as she looked around the room. Trying to imagine the life, or lack of, that Lena had carved out for herself now.

Isolated and alone.

Though Kara’s had been the same. In a way.

“Is that why you gave away all your money? Became a recluse?” Kara turned, demanding. “Don’t talk to any of our friends?”

Lena barked a laugh.

“Your friends, Kara,” she insisted. “Your’s, not mine.”

Kara’s jaw clenched, walking over to the rack of weaponry she eyes the selection of high-quality steel blades.

“You know that’s not true,” she insisted. “And all I’m pointing out is that you seem to have resorted to rather…”

Kara’s fingers hovered over a throwing knife before she answered.

“Extreme measures to distance yourself from day to day life.”

“You always seem to deal in hopes rather than in facts,” Lena’s voice sounded dismissively behind her.

Kara felt a bristle of anger run up her spine at the words.

“And for your information, I didn’t give away all of my money,” she snorted. “I donated every single piece of excess that I would never touch instead. I’m not exactly a pauper or living the spartan lifestyle here.”

Kara’s fingers itched of the familiar feeling of the weighted balance of the knife in her hand, but she let it pass and turned back around. Crossing her arms, she leant back against the bench.

“That’s not how other people see it.”

Lena laughed, full of scorn.

“I don’t give a shit about what other people think,” she exclaimed. “They’re either rich assholes who feel threatened by the idea that a person who has enough money for fifty dream lives, would give away forty-nine of them. Or, they’re just people who have fallen into the trap of thinking that everyone could be in the elite one-percent if they just worked hard enough. And that they are just temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

Kara took in her fiery words and looked down at her feet. A small smile played at the corner of her mouth.

“John Steinbeck.”

There was a pause.

“Grapes of Wrath was always one of my preferred books,” Lena muttered.

Kara looked up, still smiling softly.

“I liked Of Mice and Men better.”

Lena stared at her for a long minute, before shifting on her feet and taking a few hesitant steps forward.

“I’m not purging myself, Kara,” she whispered. “I hope that I’m not doing what I do entirely because it makes me feel like less of a shit person, or because I have a massive hole in my chest that I need to fill.”

There was a conviction in her words, and they rang with honesty, and her eyes burned with it.

“I’m not risking my life out of some desire to live dangerously.”

Kara stared at her hard, Lena's face flickered with something. An uncomfortable vulnerability.

“But... I do live my life alone because it’s easier that way,” she admitted. “I don’t get along with most people, but I want them to have a good life.”

Lena laughed quietly, shaking her head in amusement.

“A great life,” she finished. “Where they are treated with dignity, respect and don’t have to be terrified all the time. Either because some lunatic is going to swoop down and destroy half the city, or they have to constantly ask themselves if they can afford to pay for their insulin this week.”

Lena’s words echoed another time, back when they had first met, and the passion in her voice hadn’t been exhausted by affliction and time.

And by Kara.

When she wanted to change the world.

“It’d be great if the world was perfect so that I could finally be morally free enough to be as far away from everyone else as I possibly can.”

Maybe she still wanted it, even if the direction had been bent a little to the side.

“But it’s not, so here I am,” Lena shrugged. “Trying to try to be something that this city is crying out for. As best I can.”

Rao, it reminded her of herself.

Kara stepped away from the bench, walking steadily towards Lena until she stood in front of her. Lena watched her with cautious eyes as if she were afraid. Kara wondered how much of it was still masked.

She tilted her head when she was a foot away and smiled.

“I think… you’ve found your purpose.”

Lena certainly didn’t need her words, but she seemed affected by them all the same.

Blinking rapidly, her mouth which had gapped closed sharply with a click.

“What about you?”

Kara’s eyebrows raised at the question, but the immediate thought was of Kieran as her answer.

“I think I’ve found mine too,” she breathed out, her smile whimsical as she shrugged. “In a way.”

Lena’s whole body softened at her words, and a crooked smile crossed her face.

“I know you've only been back for a few days and… it’s made me wonder at both of our mental states more then ever,” Lena answered gently, her eyes looking Kara over. “And I may not know a single thing that’s going on with you really, and you may know far more about me then I would have liked at this point…”

Kara snorted at that but acknowledged the point. Lena’s smile turned smaller, but more real all at once.

“But I can’t deny,” she continued. “That you seem to be an incredible mother. And she adores you.”

Kara stuttered under the weight of Lena’s words and her eyes. Suddenly, she felt the overwhelming urge to burst into tears. Lena’s face turned stricken, and before Kara’s hand raised shakily to wipe the tears from her eyes, Lena’s fingers reached her cheek first.

Her thumb caught the fresh tears, finding them and wiping them away slowly before cupping Kara’s cheek gently.

“Hey… hey, don’t cry,” Lena crooned gently, while Kara tried to simultaneously sniff and stop herself from pressing into Lena’s unexpected touch. “I haven’t had a woman crying in my apartment for a long time, and quite frankly, it’s alarming.”

Kara laughed wetly at the unexpected humour.

“When was the last time you ever had a woman in your apartment?”

Lena grinned at her word.

“You already said that I'd have a line around the block eager to check out my beautiful scars.” Her eyebrow raised and her nose crinkling.

A swell of longing grew in Kara’s chest, and even though she couldn’t forget everything else that had happened and that should stop her from wanting for it all to not exist, and for things to be straightforward and as honest as just two people, standing so close that they could almost be one.

Kara’s breath came out heavier than before; her eyes were darting all over Lena’s face. Her eyes dilated under Kara’s gaze, and her heart started to pound harder than ever. She reached for Lena’s hip suddenly, pressing her forehead the final few inches until she could rest it against Lena’s too. The other woman’s touch on her face didn’t shift, but her lips did part.

“There hasn’t been anyone… since you,” Kara whispered against them.

Lena let out a haggard breath, but before Kara could think herself out of it, Lena’s hand dropped away from her cheek and wrapped around her lower back. Without a pause, Lena rushed Kara backwards so fast; it was only the steady pressure of Lena’s arm that kept her from tripping over. Kara felt her back hit the wall, and there was a loud clatter when something hit the ground.

Her lips crashed into Kara’s, and for a millisecond, her brain short-circuited at the now unfamiliar feeling. But then there was a shift and a sigh, and it felt like her sound opened up. As if she was tasting, feeling and seeing every colour of the rainbow.

She remembered what this felt like, the way it had only felt with Lena.

Kara pulled Lena as close as she could, groaning at the hard press of her body against hers. It felt like her whole body was waking up from a deep sleep, and she almost felt her knees give out at the flash flood of memories of the last time that they had kissed.

And everything else that had happened.

It was like breathing in oxygen for the first time, and nothing in the world existed but her and Lena. Like she was levitating off the ground floating in the air. Like every single one of her powers had been restored and so much more, because she didn’t need a single one of them to feel this good.

But as quick as it had overwhelmed her, it stopped when Lena pulled away with wide eyes and a heaving chest. Her eyes were full of panic and distress, and Kara’s mood cracked and vanished back into reality. Her forehead creased, and she looked away with shame, hugging herself at the sudden shill that had overtaken her body.

It felt wrong. Again. Because it had been wrong, and she shouldn’t have done it.

“I’m sorry.”

Kara bit her lip and stepped off the wall, giving Lena a wide berth and walked towards the door.

“We should check on Kieran.”

Kara ran her fingers gently over Kieran’s forehead, stroking back the hair from her forehead and out of her face.

She was looking better. Her troubled sleep gone in favour of an opened mouth and soft snores which never failed to make Kara smile. Of all the things that reminded her of Lena when she looked and observed her daughter, there were moments when there was nothing more obviously Kara in her daughter’s mannerisms. Rising from her crouch, Kara’s eyes drifted to Lena who stood like a silent spectre next to her, staring down at their daughter with shadowed eyes that Kara couldn’t read.

She struggled with whether she should say anything about what had happened in Lena’s armoury. Whether to apologise once more or never speak of it again. It was her fault for practically throwing herself into Lena’s arms, when she had already sworn to herself that she wasn’t going to make this even more complicated then it had to be.

But there was that small rebellious part of her mind that insisted that Lena had kissed her back.

The sensible part beat it away quickly, knowing that just because Lena had, didn’t mean that Kara should have let the situation get to that point to start with.

Especially not with everything that was happening.

Kara’s eyes turned back to her daughter, and she tried not to think about how she almost died today, even though she doubted that the image would ever be scrubbed from her mind. Her daughter’s gifts were volatile at the best of times, but despite her intellect at her age she lacked the awareness to understand that there were limits to how much her body could take before it either attacked her internally… or blew up externally.

The dark thing that she held close rumbled, but she managed to restrain it.

Thank Rao Kieran didn’t remember.

Kara’s eyes flickered with surprise when Lena bent down, gently pressing a kiss to Kieran’s forehead and letting her hand linger in her hair before she stood upright. Her face was mysterious in the dark, but Kara wondered at what was going through her mind right now.

Looking back at her daughter, she made a choice, despite the slight panic it created within her.

“You… you can stay here if you’d like,” she whispered, drawing Lena’s attention. “I can stay on the couch.”

Lena turned, ready to protest.

“Kara, I-“

She waved Lena off, a wry smile on her lips.

“It’s not fair of me to kick you out of your thousand-odd dollar bed,” she continued. “Especially considering what your back has to endure these days.”

Lena seemed to hesitate in her protests, but Kara could guess that she was sorely tempted. Her eyes looked back down at Kieran before she answered Kara’s words.

“I don’t want to move her.”

Kara shrugged. She hadn’t intended on moving her anyway.

“Then don’t.”

Lena looked back at her, a sudden glow of light from the city, some passing helicopter or plane far above, danced over her face causing a strange ripple of light and dark. A single, green eye managing to burn her all over in a split second it had to shine.

“Do you still get nightmares?” Lena asked once her face was shrouded in darkness once more. “When you sleep alone?”

Kara hesitated, but she couldn’t reply quickly.

Lena knew better than anyone how terrible her nights had been. Waking up screaming and thrashing in those last few months when Kara had all but moved into Lena’s old apartment, supposedly under the idea of constant observation in case there was a change or complication in Lena’s attempts to cure her. But it was because Kara was alone, afraid. And of all the people in her life, who she loved so dearly, Lena was the only one she felt ok to see her like that. She couldn’t burden her sister into witnessing her as a whimpering mess, unable to control her tears, and she certainly didn’t want anyone else finding out that she had been so broken.

But Lena… she understood. And in that last month, Lena had slept by her side every single night, and the nightmares had finally flown down enough for her to get some sleep. It was also the bed they had spent that last night in together, and in a sea of minimal furniture in Lena’s new apartment, it was the bed she had kept.

“Do you?” Kara asked, staring through the dark.

Lena didn’t answer straight away, but Kara heard her steady breathing in the quiet room. In tune with Kieran’s, and with her’s.

“Not a lot of people know what it feels like, do they?” Lena rumbled, the words severe and solemn all at once. “To be angry, in your bones.”

There was another flash of light in the sky and Lena’s face was totally illuminated, if only for a second. But Kara could see it again. That monster beneath that made her whole body tremble and yearn.

“I mean, they understand, everybody understands… for a while,” Lena continued, her eyes still burning in the sharp light. “Then they want you to do something they know they can’t do. Move on.”

The light vanished, and the darkness remained.

“That’s when they stop understanding.” Lena’s voice grated over itself, the double meaning of different pains. “I figured it out too late, that’s one of the reasons Lillian despised me. You’ve got to learn to hide the anger. Practice smiling in the mirror.”

Kara shuddered under the words, and suddenly Lena’s voice was closer as she stepped almost against her side.

“Like putting on a mask.” The husk curled out as quiet as smoke. “Right when I saw you, I knew who you were. I don’t mean Supergirl, I mean who you really were. I’d seen that look on your face before, the same one I’d taught myself. The look of an orphan, who'd had their whole world torn from them and wore a mask to hide it.”

And there it was. Though Lena had undoubtedly worded it better than Kara ever could have. The connection between them was more than just chemistry. An intrinsic shared grief and experience that nobody else understood. Losing their entire world as a child, leaving behind everything they had ever known to face something bigger than they ever realised it was as children. And somehow finding each other, despite how terribly their last names were linked.

And Lena had seen Kara, and Kara had seen her even if she didn’t quite understand it at the time.

Kara wasn’t afraid of the darkness within Lena. She wasn’t scared because she had the same darkness in herself.

Lena stepped away from her now, silently undressing without a hint of modesty while Kara averted her eyes with a slight blush. When her gaze flittered back, Lena was looking at from the other side of the bed with an outreached hand.

“I don’t want either of you to wake up without each other,” she explained. “The bed’s big enough for all of us.”

Kara’s heart leapt in her throat, as her brain struggled to process what Lena had just said. This whole night felt like a test of emotional whiplash, but she reached out for the thin, offered, thread greedily despite it.

“Are you sure?”

Maybe the desperation leaked into her voice, but Lena nodded and waved her hand impatiently.

“I wouldn’t have suggested it if I wasn’t.”

Kara didn’t hesitate now, moving over to Lena and letting the other woman pull the sheets back as she removed her bra underneath her shirt, vividly aware that despite Lena’s display, Kara would probably combust on the spot if Lena turned and looked while she was bare-chested next to her. Finally pulling off her pants, and at a jerk of Lena’s head, Kara crawled into the bed, shifting to the middle until she almost pressed into her daughter’s breathing back.

She felt Lena move in behind her, and Kara’s heart started to pound far too loudly for her taste. Lena settled on her other side with a slight rustle.

A few seconds of silence passed, before Lena’s voice spoke gratingly.

“This isn’t to say I’m not still monumentally pissed off with you.”

Kara fisted the sheets, but she nodded into her pillow.

“I know.”

Lena didn’t reply, but Kara did hear her turn over. She could see it in her mind, if not in reality. Waking up to Lena next to as often as she had, made her keep the image. Maybe it was because it was four in the morning, or because she was bone-weary with exhaustion, but being invited to sleep in the same bed as Lena with everything that had happened that night, let alone that day, was making her brain sluggish with confusion, and sharp with it all at once. Kara tried to convince herself to fall asleep, focusing on the soft rise and fall of Kieran’s chest, but her mind drifted pretty soon to wonder if Lena’s were so quiet that Kara couldn’t hear them, or if they were masked by Kieran’s own.

A few more minutes passed, and Kara could feel herself drifting off when she felt Lena shift behind her. Quickly, she held her breath, wondering if Lena had been waiting for her to fall asleep all alone so that she could sneak out and leave the bed to her and Kieran.

But mattress didn’t dip, and even though she took a while to settle, Kara didn’t hear Lena leave.

But now Kara was awake once more, and through the large windows, she could already see the faint tinge of the dark sky lighten with the approaching dawn. The night was vanishing in favour of the day once more. She thought about everything that had passed between them since the city had fallen asleep and wondered if this wasn’t one of the reasons that Outlier worked at night — cloaked in the dark, where time seemed to stretch on for far too long and nowhere near fast enough.

Her fingers twitched against the pillow, a growing sense of frustration in her heart before she bit her cheek and turned slowly to stare up at the ceiling. She was hoping that the neutral colour might help her sleep instead. But all it managed was to transport Kara right back to the time when she had last woken up in this bed, if not in this room, with Lena by her side.

Maybe that was the reason that Lena had been sleeping on the couch all this time. To be between her and the door in case, Kara tried to sneak off again, this time with Kieran in tow. Maybe that was also what Kara was sleeping in the middle of the bed, instead of the edge. Though she supposed, it didn’t matter.

Her head started to tilt first in Lena’s direction, Kara’s eyes suddenly feeling itchy with a need to see the other woman’s face even in the dark. Her body followed, as quietly as it could until she lay on her side and almost jolted out of her skin when Lena was far closer then she realised, and watching her with half-lidded eyes. 

“You’re not asleep.”

Kara’s fingers twitched in the small gap between them at Lena’s words.

“Neither are you,” she breathed in reply.

Lena smiled in the shadow.

“I can’t stop thinking about the last time we were in this bed together.”

Kara couldn’t either. Every second of it had been branded into her mind from the minute she had slipped out from Lena’s arm and away into the night. She had been running away from so many things and through the lost fog of what she thought she wanted. But she had been wrong. She was unable to run from the pain that plagued her or the memories, and by the time she realised that she was pregnant, it was too late for her to turn back.

“The results of that are in bed right now,” she replied in a whisper.

Lena stared at her through the dark, and Kara wondered how Lena's eyes might have become even more guarded then they had been when they first met. Or maybe it was like Lena had said, that she’d learned to smile and pretend that anger didn’t burn inside of her. The same way Kara had. Except Kara had been broken, where Lena had soared.

“I knew you were going to leave,” Lena’s voice broke through, so much gentler then what Kara knew she deserved. “I knew before it happened. I just… I didn’t expect it to be before I had a chance to say goodbye.”

In the small space between them, Kara couldn’t look away even if she wanted too. But she still felt the tight squeeze around her heart at the words. Replaying the moment she had leftover and over in her mind. At the time, a small part of her was convinced that Lena would wake up and stop her before she could reach the door.

Because if she’d stayed, everything could have been different.

But there’s no use to playing what could have been.

“I couldn’t face you,” she admitted in a trembled breath. “I was a coward.”

Lena’s face inched forward in the dark, so close now that they shared the same pillow.

“We’re all cowards, Kara.” Her words rolled like water down Kara’s body.

Kara shook her head slightly.

“Not you,” she insisted. “Never.”

Lena's eyes fluttered closed, and she drew a shuddered breath.

“Did you sleep with me that night because you thought it would ease the blow of you leaving?” The words came out weak and wanting.

“No,” Kara insisted, aghast. “Of course not.”

Lena opened her eyes.

“Then,” she continued slowly. “Because you wanted some final… connection before you did. And I was…”

Kara’s fingers brushed Lena’s, who’s were tight and clenched in the sheets. Lena twitched at the touch, but caught Kara’s and laced with them tightly.

“No,” Kara whispered. “I mean… yes, but it wasn’t… like that.”

Of course, she had wanted something that night. Because she knew she was leaving, and because she knew that it would be her last chance. But it wasn’t just that.

It was so much more than that.

“I understand,” Lena answered, squeezing Kara’s fingers tightly. “You were vulnerable and lonely, and I was too. It just… happened.”

Kara felt a hollow in her heart. The last thing she wanted was for Lena to think that it hadn’t meant anything beyond that.

Reaching her other hand over softly, she traced a line up the bare skin of Lena’s arm.

“That night,” Kara insisted softly against Lena’s shudder. “Was one of the best of my life.”

Lena laughed lightly at her words, and Kara’s heart dipped slightly.

“Introducing you to the miracles of decent sex?”

Kara felt tears burn in her eyes, but she still smiled at Lena’s humour. The other woman’s gaze turned from tired to desperate. Reaching out her free hand, she traced Kara’s lips with her trembling fingers.

“It’s good to see you smile.” Kara revelled in the touch and soft words. “I missed it. I missed everything about you.”

Kara swallowed but looked away from the intensity of her gaze.

“Lena…”

She pulled her fingers away and let out a sigh.

“It’s ok.” The disappointment rolled off of her and Kara felt a spike of guilt grow in her heart. “I know that you’ll never…”

Kara opened her mouth, but she didn’t know what to say.

How to say what she didn’t know what to say.

“Despite everything,” Lena continued. “And how angry I am with you, and all the lies and secrets, I’m so happy that you’re here.”

Kara felt a tear slip from her eye, and she hoped that Lena didn’t see it in the dark.

“And Kieran?”

Lena hesitated.

“I still don’t know yet,” she answered. “She… It’s confusing.”

Kara smiled at her, squeezing their joined fingers.

“That’s ok. It’s ok not to know.”

Lena bit her lip, looking relieved and a little sad all at once. Tension grew in the silence between them, and their closeness seemed to shrink even though they didn’t move. The sudden urge that led to them kissing earlier grew once more, but this time Kara didn’t let it get the better of her. Turning sharply and breaking their touch, Kara faced Kieran and let out a heavy breath now that she was free from Lena’s heady eyes.

She stared at Kieran instead, watching her soft breaths and smiled at the string of drool running from the corner of her mouth. Reaching out, she gently wiped it away with the sleeve of her shirt.

“She’s so much like you.”

Kara startled slightly at Lena’s voice in her ear.

“She’s got a little bit of her Mom in there too,” Kara answered softly.

It was the first time she had referred to Lena by that title, and she did so gently. She had meant it when she said that she didn’t want to force Lena into anything she didn’t want to be.

But, damn if she couldn’t see that Lena already loved Kieran.

Lena’s breath caught behind her at the words, but she remained silent. A part of Kara worried that she had pushed too far with her words. A few more minutes passed, but Kara knew that Lena hadn’t fallen asleep. She could feel her burning eyes on her back, and they made her still and unable to turn around.

“When we used to do this… we’d always wake up in each other’s arms.”

Kara’s eyes darted at the words, but she was still unable to turn.

“We did.” It was all she could answer.

A pause, then another movement behind her before she startled at the feel of Lena’s arm slipping around her middle and pressing her back into her.

“Is this…” Lena whispered into her ear. “Can I..?”

Kara tried to stop herself from sobbing now.

Holding Lena’s arm against her, she nodded into the pillow.

“Yes,” she managed to choke out.

Lena wrapped her arm even tighter and buried her face into Kara’s neck.

And Kara could feel Lena’s tears too.

Chapter Text

With a pair of rough hands under both her armpits, Lena was dragged backwards and away from the brawl.

“You’re banned!” One of the men holding her shouted, above the din of the groaning people still on the floor.

Struggling against his iron grip, Lena glared up at him.

“Why?”

“For protection!”

She scoffed, her feet scrambling for purchase.

“I don’t need protection,” she stated.

“Protection for them,” he scowled, jerking his head at the writhing group on the ground.

With a shove in her back that sent her sprawling into an alley puddle with a splash, the bouncers slammed the door behind her. The sudden cut off of heavy bass left the sound of falling rain, Lena groaning slightly and spitting out the muck from her teeth as she pressed herself up from the ground, trying to ignore the new ache in her side and chasing instead the fleeing rush of adrenaline.

It left quickly still, regardless of her feelings. In the bowels of of yet another nameless and grimy city, chasing feelings, shadows and rumours and ignoring everything else. 

Losing herself in the squalor of it all was a freeing as it was self-destructive, but it was better then the alternative. Waiting, alone, in a place that ached with the memory of a lost not-relationship.  

The lightly falling raindrops rippled against the filthy water on the ground, and her face stared back at her, dark and just as murky, even cast in the broken neon glow of the street.  

“Are you so desperate to fight criminals that you seek them out in backwater bars to take them on one at a time?”

Lena turned at the man’s voice, facing the shrouded figure watching her from corner of the alley. Small, smaller then her even, with a sort of ageless air she hadn’t seen in anybody since before her father became sick and died. He watched her with calm eyes, flat and with keenly practiced emotionlessness. Lena scowled at his words, but a chill tapped her spine under that stare all the same. 

Every alarm bell in her mind screamed in a single instant that this man was dangerous, and was to be feared. Still, like everything these days, anger was the only emotion she had left to care for. 

“Actually, there were seven of them,” she replied blithely, not bothering the step back into an awning, letting the mist of the light rain settle in her hair and coat instead. 

The man stepped forward, allowing Lena a better view of his face. Seemingly as cool and flat as the rest of him, but he wore a dark suit that her trained eye knew immediately was designed with a simple elegance that oozed money. 

“I counted only six, Ms Luthor.”

Lena’s scowl faded into blankness, even though her anger peaked in her heart. 

“How do you know my name?” She demanded.

The man stepped forward again, circling her slowly like a predator sizing up his prey. 

“The world is far too small for someone like Lena Luthor to disappear,” he answered, eye flickering over the state of her clothes and the bar door she’d just been thrown out of. “No matter how deep she chooses to sink.”

Lena swallowed hard at his words, her head following his movement.  

“Who are you?” 

The small man shrugged.

“My name is merely Jonah, but that is of no import so much as what that name represents.”

Completing a full rotation of her, he stopped to stand a foot away from her now. 

“Greatly feared by the criminal underworld, a name that can can offer you a path.”

Lena scoffed at his words.

“What makes you think I need a path?” Her jaw clenched around the words, as if finding meaning in the shattered mess of her life could be so simply given. 

“Someone like you is only here by choice,” Jonah answered cooly. “You have been exploring the criminal fraternity, ever since you gave up on finding whatever it is you originally sought. But whatever that was… you have become truly lost.”

Lena rocked back slightly, anger burgeoning into wariness and loneliness and all-consuming hatred for everything her life had ever snatched from her grasp. This wasn’t the first time since she had left that someone had recognised her. It wasn’t the first time someone had offered her more, be it drugs, company, revenge or all the rest. The mix of Luthor and immorality clung to her forever now it seemed, forever unable to be washed off and drew them in like flies to a rotted corpse. It always ended badly for whoever wanted to broker the deal, and Lena always limped away alive. 

“And what path can your name offer?” The condescension dripped over her words

Jonah mouth thinned in a tight lipped not-smile, the dangerous gleam in flaring. 

“The path of a person who shares your hatred of evil,” he husked out. “And wishes to serve true justice. The path in the shadows.”

Lena snorted, sourness filling her mouth a mixing with the lingering taste of mud.

“Vigilantes,” she answered for him, frustration bearing out and she moved to step away. Before she could, he reached out to grab her wrist, holding it in a locked iron grip.

The constantly boiling pot inside of her exploded at the action, her hatred at being touched mixing with her hatred at everything else. She scratched at him with other hand, but before she could make contact, he seemingly melted away from where he had been standing, leaving her to lurch with momentum. His grip on her wrist remained just as iron though, her arm pulled behind her back so tightly, the muscles in her shoulder screamed. Before Lena could think beyond the pain, he let go and sent her stumbling forward with a sharp shove. 

Pinwheeling like a doll, she turned as soon as she was steady, her fury melting away as he stood steady where she had stood. Something about it made the pain in her shoulder lesson, and the anger inside of her flicker with uncertainty. 

“Tell me, Ms Luthor,” he questioned, as if he hadn’t almost glided with such physical mastery. “What do you seek?”

Lena blinked, her unsettled thoughts, wants, desires and emotions churning and whirling like a stew before suddenly, it stopped, and she found herself with the words to answer the strange man’s question as he began to circle her once more. 

“I seek… The means to fight injustice,” she replied, following him with her eyes once again.“To turn fear against those who pray on the fearful.”

The man’s tracked her words with a nod.

“To manipulate the fears in others, you must first master your own,” he answered easily. “Are you ready to begin?”

Lena’s mind flashed with Kara’s face. She found the words leaden on her tongue.

“I…”

Without warning, the man kicked out sharply, hitting her in the chest with a thud that threw her back into the mud.

“Death does not wait for you to be ready!”

Lena wheezed, winded and rolled as he followed up with another kick to her side that curled her into a ball.

“Death is not considerate or fair!”

The gushes of pain jolted throughout Lena’s body. Her stomach ached, her arms lost tension and her legs began to weaken. Tongue soaked in the taste of blood. Her ears rung with the sudden and swift beating, but she could see through the white haze of her eyes that the man was standing over her, ready to deliver enough blow. 

“And make no mistake,” Jonah continued. “With me, you shall face death!”

Something inside of her, the primal instinct that she had been feeding for so long now, reared it’s head. The desire to survive along with everything she had been taught and learned about fighting since before Kara had left, and after. Before Jonah’s foot could make contact with her body again, she caught it, snarling up at the man. Lena threw it to the side and tried to regain some balance on her feet as she raised her fists in a fighting pose. The man watched her blandly, but despite her rage Lena swore there was a flicker of approval in his eyes.

“Tiger,” he called her.

Lena let out a yell, throwing a punch with it that he caught and redirected with ease, pinning her arm easily as he threw his own sharply into her ribs.

“Ju Jitsu,” he continued in her ear when she yelped, letting his grip loose as she regained her stance with watering eyes. 

Throwing a series of punches, she tried to advance, but he moved like water around each with ease. 

“Karate,” he continued, grabbing her wrist with one hand and the front of her shirt with his other. “You’re skilled, but this is not a dance.”

Sharply, he slammed his head into her nose, not enough for it to break, but enough for her to lose her balance and sense. Lena sprawled back flat into the mud, the splash of the puddle staining her completely wet and disgusting and she heaved for breath.

Beaten and bloody, her vision blurred and refocused on the man above her.   

“And you are afraid, but not of me. Tell me, Ms Luthor… what do you fear?”

Jonah watched with the same unchanged, detached stare. Making no move to pick help her up, but neither making as if to fight. 

“A vigilante is just a person lost in the scramble for their own gratification,” he explained, his voice quiet and soothing, like a balm against her soul. “They can be destroyed or locked up.”

Her eyes remained locked with his as he crouched at her side, staring down into her eyes, Jonah hovered like a dark spectre, catching Lena in his shadow.

“But if you make yourself more then just human, if you devote yourself to an ideal and if they can’t stop you… then you become something else entirely.”

The sound of her heart in her ears hammered like a drum, but Lena found herself entranced by his words.

“Which is?”

The corner of his mouth twitched upwards.

“Legend,” he replied deliberately. “Ms Luthor.” 

Not waiting for a reply, Jonah stood straight once more, Lena struggling to sit up to follow his movement. Her whole body ached now, but it didn’t matter anymore. Amazingly, he remained clean of dirt or grime even though she was covered. As if he had on an invisible coat that shielded him from every kick and punch she’d never landed. 

“If you are bored of brawling with petty thieves and want to achieve something real, come look for me in National City,” he called over his shoulder as he started to walk towards the main street. 

Stopping at the entranceway, as if knowing she would stand again, he turned back to face her.

“If you can find me there instead, you may find what you were really looking for in the first place.”

He turned up his collar to face the wind.

“And, what was I looking for?” Lena called after him.

His stare cut through her soul. 

“Only you can know that.”

It was a deeper sleep then she could have ever imagined. Disturbing dreams drawn back from the recesses of her mind the way they always did, so many faces vanishing. But there was something better about day, her body felt good, better then ever. A natural better that the Harun-El never gave her. There was no chemical muscular hangover. No feeling of tense, our of control, coiled energy thrumming through her veins almost threatening to shoot out of her fingertips like lightning. Instead she felt sort of… unstretched. Loose. Pressed down. Something, a weight, warm on her, pressing her into the mattress. Vibrating.

Vibrating?

Lena’s eyes were crusty when she opened them, brain fog retreating and plain confusion replacing it. She was pretty sure that the rumble through her chest wasn’t her own breath, unless she had swallowed a chainsaw in her sleep. Blinking down, eyes focusing, she found the source of the noise and weight at the same time. Sometime in the night Lena had turned onto her back, and Kara had clearly decided that she made for a better pillow. Deeply asleep, her mouth gapped and rumbling snores emanated from the cavernous space.

Lena could help herself, she laughed, the sound choking off when Kara stirred, a crease between her eyes. Thankfully, she didn’t wait, even though her head was practically rattled by how hard Lena was trying to contain herself at the ridiculousness of it all.

The past couple of days entered into Lena’s mind and she had to wonder at the weirdness of it all. 

So much for a predictable, painful and lonely morning routine. 

Kara’s presence, the way it always had, upended everything in her life. She was a born disrupter. Looking at her now, watching her, Lena wondered how it was possible to have so many feelings for one person all at once. It was a wonder she didn’t explode. 

The bitterness was still there, and seeing this scene made her want to cry for how much she had missed already, so much of her ached for it to happen again tomorrow, and the next day and all the days into forever. She was a mess and Kara was a mess and Kieran was… whatever Kieran was, and none of this had a snowball’s chance in hell of making any sort of sense any time soon, but god if she didn’t want it all to somehow work anyway.

At the thought of Kieran, Lena twisted her head as best she could. Seeing Kieran on the other side of the bed, almost mimicking Kara’s posture, half sprawled over Kara’s back emitting her own, slightly softer, snores. Together they were a pile. One big, domestic pile that wasn’t going to now send her into an anxiety attack that clawed at the back of her throat, sending her into near manic laughter. 

Christ, these mood swings were going to kill her before a bullet did. 

Wanting this, not wanting this… she had spent so long being at war with herself that a peaceful moment like this just made her more paranoid that outside forces was going to ruin it. 

Or rather, inside forces.

The kiss last night had been a mistake. Made in a rush of… survival? Loneliness? All the same reasons that had led to them sleeping together the first time around. Maybe Lena was just kidding herself, maybe believing that being with Kara in a somewhat healthy was was ridiculous considering, well, everything, but she still longed for it. 

About fifteen percent of her longed for it

Something healthy, where there were no lies and Lena was happy and they both weren’t so damaged. Where coming together and choosing to be with each other meant more then just clinging onto a each other in a storm. 

Lena walked into her safe room and looked around. The high-tech equipment, including computers, monitors, and various gadgets were all the same. Funny how some things monumental could shift in just one night, but others were so static. She approached her computer and spoke to Vera.

"Morning, Vera," she said.

"Good morning, Boss. Congratulations are in order. So far, I’ve tracked no ill-effects of the use of the Harun-El solution," Vera responded.

Lena let out a sigh, trying to forget the night before. She rubbed the back of her neck, pressing hard at the muscles there, feeling the tension.

"How many ounces of whiskey a day do you think I'll need to drink to forget that particular incident?" Lena asked, half-jokingly.

"I don't know, boss. But the unintended consequences of it seemed to have inspired a newfound closeness between yourself and Ms Danvers. To counteract the symptoms of letting people into your life, I cannot say," Vera said, for to bluntly to be hiding behind an unemotional AI excuse. 

Lena scoffed, eyeing the intercom that Vera's voice came out of. "I swear to God, I'll dismantle you and throw you into the trash compactor one of these days," she joked.

"Yes, boss," Vera responded.

Lena wondered how an AI could possibly be so sarcastic. She walked over to the mirror in the room and pulled off her shirt, examining her body. It had never looked so undamaged in her whole time as an Outlier. The worry on Kieran’s behalf was still there, but she couldn't help feeling a sense of relief at the sight of her healed skin. There was still scars, faded, but there. She could still feel the stitches on her back that Kara had sewn though. Healing, but there. 

Fingers on her skin.

Lena frowned and turned away from the mirror.

"How's my body looking then after that healing session?" Lena asked Vera.

"Vitals are good. Blood toxicity negligible for this stage in the weekly cycle. Whatever powers Kieran used, you appear to be physically healthier than you've ever been since you took up the mantle of Outlier," Vera reported.

Lena's mind drifted back to the events of the previous night. She remembered the fear and desperation she had felt as Kieran's life hung in the balance. She had used her powers to heal Lena, but it had taken a toll on both of them. She couldn't shake the feeling of guilt that lingered in the pit of her stomach, knowing that Kieran had put herself in harm's way to help her.

She picked up her destroyed helmet, memories of the slick-haired alien wanker man that practically destroyed it resurfacing, Lena couldn't help but feel frustrated. It was a constant reminder of the dangers she faced as Outlier, and the need to constantly upgrade her gear. She eyed it critically, mentally noting the improvements she would make to the design when she built a new one. Until then, she would have to make do with her old, half-helmet like she did with the dealers last night, a far cry from the protective gear she needed for the kind of missions she undertook. Especially the tinny audio filters that made her voice modulator sound like she was a talking cat at the end of a long tunnel.

Setting the helmet down, Lena made her way to the pull-up bar in the corner of the room. She grabbed hold of the bar and began her chin-ups, each repetition a physical release for the pent-up emotions inside her. She spoke through each rep, the words coming out in a steady stream.

“Well, that’s something at least.” Her muscles strained, but Lena pushed through the pain, using it as fuel to keep going. “What can you tell me about this organisation? This Iliad?”

“Deep data drives have revealed little. Rumours of a shadow organisation in Europe matching the pattern Dain spoke of. Whispers of a move to the US, but so far nothing with local law enforcement.“

Lena enjoyed the sweat and the feeling of being able to think while she exercised. She thought over what she knew about Iliad and remembered her encounter with the man who nearly killed her on the roof the other night.

“Well, they’re clearly established here,” Lena said, her voice strained from the exertion of the chin-ups. at least to some degree. “Buying guns, assassinations… There must be something you can find. What about the suited man? We have his DNA.”

Vera pulled up a projected strand of the DNA, revealing that he was a thus far unidentified alien.

Lena's grip on the bar tightened as she processed the information. An unidentified alien leading an organisation that seemed to be involved in illegal activities was not something she expected. She pushed herself harder, the strain in her muscles growing as she tried to think of any connections or leads. Lena's mind raced with possibilities as she continued her exercise routine. She needed to find out more about this organisation and its leader, and she needed to do it fast. She couldn't let them operate unchecked in her city.

“He could have been lying to those men. He could be the leader.”

With a final grunt, Lena completed her last rep and dropped down from the bar, her body slick with sweat. She took a deep breath and wiped her face with a towel, her mind already turning to the next mission. She rolled her neck out, feeling the tension slowly melting away.

“I think he’s a lieutenant. There’s someone else, more powerful, pulling the strings here. A figure in the shadows,” Lena said, her voice low and serious.

She furrowed her brows, thinking hard. The situation with Kara was weighing heavily on her mind, adding another layer of complexity to her already complicated life. There were too many loose ends, too many secrets. Something wasn't connecting and Lena didn't like it.

“Fascinating, you two should exchange notes over coffee,” Vera said with same not-quite sarcasm.

Lena smirked, feeling a small spark of amusement amidst the stress and chaos of her life.

“Now you’re trying to set me up with the person who tried to murder me?” she replied, her tone playful.

“At this point, I’d set you up with anyone if it meant proving you still have a functioning heart,” Vera retorted.

Lena scoffed, but her mind was still focused on the mission at hand.

“Perhaps a person who comes that close to killing you shouldn’t be trifled with,” Vera cautioned.

“I didn’t think I was known for trifling with criminals. These people are dangerous. This organisation is dangerous and this city needs me,” Lena replied, her voice firm.

“This city needs Lena Luthor. Your resources, your knowledge. It doesn’t need your body, or your life,” Vera said, her voice softening.

“You’re afraid that I’ll fail? Don’t worry, Vera. Plenty of things have almost killed me before, and I’m always the one left standing in the end,” Lena said, a note of determination in her voice.

"Maybe so. But if there is no Lena Luthor left to support Outlier, can Outlier still exist?" Vera spoke up, pulling Lena's attention back to the room.

"What are you talking about?" Lena asked, confused.

Vera pulled up a breaking news report and Lena's attention was immediately drawn to it.

“Breaking news coming out of National City just moments ago, with two board members of L-Corp resigning from the company. Statements made to the press, echo the rumours that have plagued L-Corp for years surrounding mismanagement and the abrupt retreat of it’s CEO, Lena Luthor, from the public eye. Fears of a stock drop as investors flee the company remain to be seen-“

Lena's phone began to ring, and she quickly answered it, already knowing who was on the other end.

“As of today, Ms Luthor, there appear to be few options left to you. You need to move your interests back into our weapons program-“

“Not going to happen,” Lena interrupted, her tone firm.

Lena's heart pounded in her chest as she listened to Troy's words, feeling the weight of the world bearing down on her. She had always known that her decision to shut down L-Corp's weapons manufacturing division would come with consequences, but she had never expected them to be this severe. The very thought of putting blood and profit above all else sickened her, and she knew that she would never compromise her values for the sake of money.

Her eyes flicked to the TV screen, where the news of her resignation and the possible stock drop was being broadcasted. She couldn't believe that it had come to this - that her family's legacy, which she had worked so hard to redeem, was now on the brink of collapse.

As Troy continued to speak, Lena felt a sense of despair creeping over her. She had always thought that she was in control of her life, that her wealth and power would shield her from any harm. But now she realised that she was more vulnerable than she had ever imagined. The board's anger towards her ran deep, and she had no allies left to protect her.

But Lena was not one to give up easily. She squared her shoulders, her eyes narrowing with determination. The weight of the conversation hung heavy on her, but she refused to let it crush her spirit. Her heart raced as she tried to come up with a plan to save L-Corp.

“Ms Luthor, the defence department has offered a sizeable-“

“I am not my family. L-Corp is not my family’s legacy, it’s mine, and it will not be blood for money. Never again. I’ve seen far too many times. L-Corp has more to offer this world than death. The weapons manufacturing division of L-Corp was shut down for a reason.”

Troy's voice was heavy with resignation, as he reminded her of the past.

“Yes, and when you made that announcement to the world, you painted a target on the back of your head with the board. The over-under on the stock drop was forty points in one day, and the board never forgave you.”

“We recovered.”

“We managed. Lena, L-Corp at its heart, is a weapons manufacturer.”

Lena's voice was unwavering, even in the face of such uncertainty.

“No. Clean energy, agriculture, medical advances-”

“They want you out, Lena.”

Lena's jaw tightened, knowing that the board had never approved of her direction for the company.

"I don't care what the board thinks," she said firmly. "L-Corp is more than just a company, it's a force for good in this world. I will not let them destroy it.”

Troy sighed heavily. "I admire your spirit, Ms Luthor, but the reality is that we need to take drastic measures to save the company. If we don't act fast, it could be the end of L-Corp.”

Lena's mind raced as she tried to think of a solution.

“What can I do?”

“You’ve got to let me handle this.”

“What can I do?”

“Lay low. Please. Anything you do now will only contribute to the image that you’re…. overtaxed. They’re filing an injunction. They want to lock you out.”

“I still own the controlling interest in the company!”

“Lena, the board has rights too. They’ve been making the case for years that you and the direction you’re taking isn’t in the company’s best interests. And you’ve hardly made an admirable case for yourself. Missing directors meetings, sudden changes in employment contracts-”

Lena felt a twinge of guilt, knowing that she had neglected some of her responsibilities as CEO in favour of her work as Outlier.

“I’m being responsible! I’m… giving a damn about people! Our people!”

Troy's words hung heavily in the air, and Lena felt the weight of the situation bearing down on her. The board wanted her out, and they were willing to do whatever it took to make that happen.

“Not to the board. Lena, I’m trying to turn this around. I’ve been trying to turn this around for a while now, but with Stein and Harvey selling out today it’s difficult. You’ve got to give me something. Something to pitch to them all. A bone to throw at them to keep them off your back. Let the engineers analyse what you’re building down there in that lab. Get the specs and have something big-”

Lena's mind raced, trying to think of something to satisfy the board without compromising her principles. She knew that the things she was developing, the tools, the Harun-El experiments, were all things she had made for herself as Outlier. They were never meant to be commercialised or weaponised.

She let out a deep sigh and ran a hand through her hair, trying to think clearly. She couldn't let the board destroy everything she had built, but she also couldn't compromise her values. There had to be a way to save L-Corp without sacrificing her integrity.

“Troy-“

“I’m not an idiot, Lena. I know you’re working on something.”

“No.”

It was firm. Final. The silence hung. Charged.

“I’ll do what I can.“

He hung up.

Lena slammed her phone down on the desk and let out a frustrated growl. The situation with L-Corp was spiralling out of control, and there seemed to be no end to the board's demands. She had built this company from the ground up, and now they were trying to tear it apart.

But it wasn't just L-Corp. Her life as Outlier was becoming more and more complicated by the day. Kieran's near-death experience, Kara's secrets, and now this mess with L-Corp. It felt like everything was falling apart around her, and she didn't know how to keep it all together.

She paced around the room, her mind racing with all the things that needed her attention. The Harun-El experiments, her weapons research, her obligations as Outlier… it was all too much.

Lena let out a frustrated scream and kicked a nearby chair. She knew she needed to get a grip on her emotions, but it felt like everything was working against her.

As she tried to calm herself down, Lena couldn't help but think about Kieran. The girl had already been through so much, and now she has nearly died. She knew she needed to make it up to her somehow, but she didn't know how. There wasn’t exactly a parenting book covering this situation.

And then there was Kara. Lena knew that Kara was hiding something from her, something important. She had tried to get answers, but Kara had been evasive, and Lena didn't know if she could trust her anymore. And maybe Kara couldn’t trust Lena.

As Lena took a deep breath and tried to centre herself, she knew that she couldn't let all of these problems consume her. She had to find a way to keep moving forward, to keep fighting for what she believed in. But in that moment, it all felt overwhelming, and Lena didn't know if she could handle it all.

Lena was fuming with rage and frustration.

"I don't care if you have to hack, data-mine, and scour everything on the face of the earth. Find me something about Iliad, Vera," Lena growled out, her voice laced with determination.

Vera responded immediately. 

"Understood, Lena. I will begin a deep scan of all available databases and cross-reference any relevant information related to Iliad. I will also attempt to access any encrypted sources to obtain more valuable data.”

Lena pulled her shirt back on roughly and left the room, needing a distraction. Maybe a whisky. 

Or three.

Lena stepped into the kitchen, her footsteps echoing against the floor. She paused as Kieran looked up at her from the couch, his eyes scanning over her face for any signs of trouble. Kara was standing by the coffee maker, a fresh pot brewing as she watched Lena warily. The three of them regarded each other with cautious interest, all aware of the tension and secrets that lay beneath the surface.

Lena let out a sigh, feeling out of place and uncomfortable in her own home. She knew that Kieran and Kara were hiding things from her, just as she was hiding her own secrets from them. But right now, they all needed each other. Whether that be out of necessity or something else.

Kara broke the silence, offering her a cup of coffee. Lena nodded her thanks, taking the mug with a grateful smile. She took a sip, the bitterness of the black coffee comforting and familiar.

“How is she?” Lena asked, referring to Kieran's recovery from last night.

“Fine. She doesn’t remember much,” Kara replied, her eyes flickering to Kieran for a moment before returning to Lena.

Lena felt a pang of guilt at Kieran's sacrifice, knowing that if she had been more careful, Kieran wouldn't have been hurt. She couldn't help but feel a sense of responsibility for those she cared about, and she vowed to do whatever it takes to keep them safe.

“She’s resilient. Did she not know that if she healed me-“ Lena trailed off, the memory of Kieran nearly dying because of her powers still fresh in her mind.

“She knew,” Kara confirmed, her expression solemn.

Lena ran a hand through her hair, feeling the weight of the situation bearing down on her. She turned to Kara, wanting to address the elephant in the room.

“Kara, I-“ she began, before the sound of a knock interrupted her thoughts.

Lena tensed, wondering who could be at the door. She motioned for Kara and Kieran to stay put, before walking towards the front entrance. Her mind raced with irritation as she checked the security system. Her eyebrows furrowed as she saw Alex and J'onn standing outside together, their presence, both unexpected and unwelcome.

”What the fuck are you two doing here?" Lena spat out through the door, her voice thick with frustration.

"Let us in. We're not doing this in the hall," J'onn responded firmly, his tone brooking no argument.

Lena glared at them for a moment, her hand hovering over the lock. She was angry, but a small part of her was curious too - what could they possibly want with her? With a deep sigh, she relented and opened the door, her eyes narrowing as she gestured them inside.

Alex stepped in first, her face serious as she glanced at Lena. J'onn followed close behind, his posture imposing as he surveyed the room. Lena stood in the middle of the living room, her arms crossed as she stared at them, a scowl etched on her face.

Lena felt her annoyance bubbling up inside of her, her sharp words cutting through the tension in the room. 

"What do you want?" she asked, not bothering to hide her irritation.

“Nice to see you too, Lena,” Alex answered dryly.

“I repeat. What the fuck are you doing here?”

Kara intervened, her tone softer. “Lena.”

“What!?”

“Language.”

Kara tilted her head in Kieran’s direction. 

Lena scowled, but turned back to the two unwelcome intruders.

“I didn’t agree to this… meeting… Why is he here?” Lena asked Alex, jerking her head towards J’onn.

Alex responded, “Lena, expand the circle of trust… just a little.”

“Expand the… You told him. Jesus fucking christ.”

If there wasn’t a child in the room, Lena would throw something. Hell, maybe even then she would if the child wasn’t Kieran. What was the goddamn point of trying to maintain a secret fucking identity if everyone fucking knew about it.

Kara chimed in once more, “Lena. Language.”

Lena let out a growl of frustration, but then softened slightly.

J’onn looked past Lena, her shoulders relaxing. Her strode forward and Lena watched as J’onn hugged Kara tightly, the two of them holding onto each other like they were the only things keeping the other from falling apart. Lena felt a pang of something that she couldn't quite put her finger on as she stood there, silent and awkward, feeling out of place in the moment. She didn't know why, but seeing J’onn with Kara, embracing her like that, made her feel like an outsider in her own life.

Kieran stood up from the couch, her curiosity clearly piqued by the hug, and walked towards Kara and J’onn. Lena felt a small sense of relief at the distraction, glad for anything to take the focus off of her own discomfort. When the hug finally ended, J’onn looked down at Kieran, introducing himself as an old friend of her mothers.

“Which one?” Kieran asked, his gaze shifting between Lena and Kara.

Lena felt Alex's eyes flicker towards her and she shifted uncomfortably, unsure of how to answer. She knew that Kieran wasn't asking to be hurtful, but the question stung nonetheless.

J’onn smiled softly, his eyes kind as he replied, “Both of them.”

Lena's scowl deepened at J’onn's words, a flicker of aggravation and guilt rising in her chest. She hadn't spoken to J’onn in years, not since Kara had left. She had cut herself off from everyone, even those who had been her closest friends, in an attempt to distance herself from the sins of her family. And then, once she’d begun her work as Outlier, it had made even more sense. But now, standing there in the wake of J’onn's hug with Kara, Lena couldn't help but feel like she had made a mistake.

Kieran peered up at J’onn, as if weighing him up.

“My name’s Kieran.”